Homework Assignments

These assignments were developed to provide extra exposure and practice on foundation concepts and methods of CSCW. You are welcome to discuss your approach to the homework or general questions with other students, but the construction of the assignment you submit should be your own work.

Homework 1: Conversational Process (due Wednesday, January 28) From the chapters written by Clark, Brennan and Ohaeri and our class discussion of the role of language in collaboration, (1) find an occasion on which to unobtrusively observe people interacting in a public place, (2) observe as much as you can about their interaction, (3) describe/transcribe what you observed and (4) analyze their interaction. Please answer each question in order.

1) Who were the ratified participants? Were there any unratified participants? How could you tell? Did this ever change?

2) How did the participants position themselves physically with respect to one another? When (precisely) did this change?

3) What conversational conventions, communal common ground, and personal common ground did the participants assume at the start of the conversation (see Table 2 in Monk's chapter)?

4) What did they say or do which conveyed signals of either understanding or misunderstanding? How and to what effect?

5) How did the participants feel during the interaction? How did they feel about one another? How did you know? Where there any shifts during the interaction? How did you know?

6) Were there any topic shifts?

7) What role did the setting play in their interaction? How did the interactants interleave interactions with objects in the environment with interactions with each other?

8) Which of Clark and Brennan's (1991) constraints for grounding (see Table 5 in Monk's chapter) seem to be operating in this conversation? What is your evidence?

9) How if at all would the conversation be degraded (or modified) if it were conducted using a text-based chat tool?

Homework 2: Activity Theory (due Monday, February 23)
Working from the "triangle" Engestrom model summarized by Kuutti & Arvonen (1992; in particular, see Figures 2, 4, 8) , construct a labeled diagram of the activity "pre-registering for Spring 2004 graduate classes in Computer Science at Virginia Tech". Submit this with a brief discussion (up to 300 words, 1-2 pages): What are the components of your activity analysis? How do the components interact? Where if at all are the most likely breakdowns? What changes (technical or social/cultural) might enhance the activity?

Homework 3: Email Communication (due Monday, March 22)
Carry out a short "diary study" of your own use of email: For two days (not during spring break!), archive all of your sent and received email. Start by looking at non-personal interactions. How many messages do you get from listservs, how many advertisements, what other non-personal interactions? Then, discard these and organize the remaining email into "exchanges". An exchange is any series of incoming or outgoing email messages related to a single topic. An exchange may involve more than one other person, and may take place over a substantial period of time. An individual message may belong to more than one exchange, if it is used to serve multiple purposes. Create an ordered list of exchanges based on time of initiation.

Develop a summary for each exchange indicating a) approximate start and stop date/time; b) number of participants; c) number of messages; d) communication breakdowns or misunderstandings if any; e) general goal and final status of the exchange (e.g., was the goal achieved, partly or fully?). For part e) feel free to use generic language (e.g., "arrange an outing" rather than "arrange to meet at the Cellar") in reporting your communication goals. You may find it useful to organize these summaries as a table, but the details of the format is up to you.

After the summary listing, write a short discussion (up to 300 words, 1-2 pages) about your observed email strategies and habits. In this consider how and when you initiate or cooperate in responding to email exchanges, what sorts of goals you pursue through email, what patterns of communication success or failure you see, and how your email collaborations might be enhanced (either through technology or behavioral changes).