ELECTRONIC MEETING SYSTEMS TO SUPPORT GROUP WORK

ELECTRONIC MEETING SYSTEMS TO SUPPORT GROUP WORK

Joseph S. Valacich, Douglas R. Vogel, July 1991/Vol,3'1", No. 7/COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM

Positive gains from meetings. 

1. Group has more information than the individual
2. synergy - people use information in new ways from the one holding it. 
3. Stimulation - working as group encourage individual to perform 
4. Learning - from more skilled members

Negatives about meetings

1. Air time fragmentation - group must ration speaking time among members
2. Attenuation blocking - contributions begin dropped due to not speaking in direct response to stimulation
3. Attention blocking - fewer comments are made because your listening to someone else's comments and forget your own. 
4. Concentration blocking - having to hold on to your idea while waiting your turn 
5. Members lack focus on communication, missing or fogetting the contribution others make
6. Conformance pressure - members will not criticise the comments of others due to politeness or fear of reprisals. 
7. Evaluation of apprehension - people don't want to put ideas forward incase they sound stupid. 
8. Free riding - letting others do the talking
9. Cognitive inertia - (I would call this narrative inertia )  . The conversation follows one train of thought, people self censor contributions which are off topic. 
10. Socializing - excessive chat cuts down time. 
11. Domination - some members exercise undue influence and monopolise time unproductively. 
12. Information overload - to move information to fast. 
13. 'difficulty integrating members contributions because the group does not have an appropriate method leading to dysfunctional cycling or incomplete discussions leading to premature decisions
14. Incomplete information - partial information 

An interesting and strangely incomplete list. 

I would think that the positives list is much longer how about 'owner ship of decisions'. If you've participated in the decision making process then your much more likely to work for the new target even if your contribution was rejected. Many of the items on the list where linked to a paper so perhaps they avoided stuff which hand't been done before. 

What about time - consuming 20 peoples time costs more than consuming one persons time. 

Clearly some items have links to group size (1-airtime fragmentation gets worse with size of group).

Electronic meeting systems (EMS) want to deliver 

1. process support ( ways of communicating). 
1. an EMS lets people talk in 'parallel'. 
2. process structure, ( pattern, timiing of content of this communication ) 
1. for example following agenda 
3. task support , - support for task related activittes ( external dadabases ) 
1. for example by having access to info about previsou meetings. 
2. also calculators or spreadsheets. 
4. task strcture.  - technques, rules or models for analyzing task related info to get new insight. 

I find this a curious ontology. 

OK what is nice is that electronic meeting systems sometimes work sometimes don't - because people hold meetings in differing ways. 

I like the notion of an EMS providing a 'group memory' - recording in a non linear way what has been said.  Its odd - does every one HAVE to type in an EMS - can someone talk too ? 

Note that the 24 line system caused people to look locally and loose global view. 

Possible to record in a way that captures the narrative of what's happening. For example a tag cloud that shows what's happening ( more used words get bigger ), perhaps some kind of time line of comments and what they relate to. 

I think this might work with multiple screens - perhaps many keyboards. This feels like its getting away from the small table top study I want to run. 

I like the notion of a narrative visualisation - 

Perhaps an EMS system might also ask how long the meeting is and then try to keep people on topic by fading in how much money is being spent when it starts to run over. 

Interaction styles 

• Chauffeured style ( one person does all the mouse clicking, public display )
• Supported style - everyone has a computer each
• Interative style - everyone has a computer but doesn't talk out loud. 

These styles worked better for different sizes of groups and depending upon activity. 

The over all taks is 

1.  exploration and idea generation 
2. idea organisation 
3. Prioritising 
4. policy development, evaluation stake holder anyslsis. 

I'm not sure about this. I think we now have

1.  current situation description, 
2. brain storming, 
3. Commenting ( attaching info to ideas ) 
4. idea organisation 
5. priortising/voting 
6. conclusion

Evaluation

 Anonymity worked out really well but also liberated people to begin 'flaming' got worse with bigger sizes.  But people like anonymity. 

 Terms to look out for 

group

Group Support Systems 
Group Decision Support Systems