I led a small team in the development and evaluation of "ThoughtSwap" - a web-based tool designed to facilitate co-present discussion.
A lot of times in conversation, we are concerned with the production or out-put of ideas and thoughts. But equally as important is the reception or up-take of ideas. Its not enough for a thought to be said, it also needs to be truly heard.
Dickey-Kurdziolek, M., Schaefer, M., Tatar, D., & Renga, I. (2010). Lessons from ThoughtSwap-ing: Increasing Participant's Coordinative Agency in Facilitated Discussion. Paper presented at the Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, Savannah, GA.
Key component of ThoughtSwap: re-presenting the ideas of others entered thoughts.
Through using ThoughtSwap the participants become mutually dependent on each other. I rely on whoever received my thought to express it for me, and someone else is depending on me to present their thought for them. Not only do I have to make sense of and represent a fellow participants’ thought, but I also get to hear my own thoughts be reinterpreted and represented by someone else. As such, a successful activity requires minimal participation from everyone and each participant is directly charged with the task to receive, interpret, and re-present another’s thoughts.
Design of ThoughtSwap is still on going.
Currently implemented as a Java Applet and as a Java Application.
ThoughtSwap has been used and evaluated in Elementary and Middle Science classrooms, College courses on Ethics and Computing, and Graduate level seminar courses. Research on ThoughtSwap evaluations have been published at multiple conference (CSCW, DIS) and workshop (ShareIT) venues.
