GSS for presentation support
Robert M. Davison, Robert Owen Briggs · Communications of the ACM · 2000
Presentations are an ubiquitous feature of organizational life.They are a key method for achieving a clear understanding of complex ideas among large groups of people.However, there is often little time for genuine interaction among presenters and their audiences.Imagine a presentation where the entire audience jumped into a lively debate as soon as the presentation began.Imagine the presenter continued unconcerned, that everybody heard the presentation without losing the thread of the discussion in the audience.Imagine the participants could report the discussions months later with complete accuracy.With standard methods this would be impossible, yet with Group Support Systems (GSS) this scenario can be realized fairly easily.A GSS is a suite of software tools for focusing and structuring group deliberation, while reducing the cognitive costs of communication and information access among teams making a joint cognitive effort toward a goal [3].GSS participants simultaneously type their contributions into a network of computers.The software immediately makes all contributions available to the other participants.If the team feels it appropriate, the GSS allows for anonymous input.A GSS may have tools for collaborative idea generation and organization, electronic polling, simultaneous document authoring, and multicriteria decision-making, among others.Each tool creates a different kind of group dynamic.One may encourage participants to diverge from customary thought patterns, while another may cause them to converge quickly on key issues.One may encourage them to contribute in great depth and detail, while another may move them to a broader, big-picture view.Here, we rethink the traditional presentation-and-discussion structure, exploring means that may enhance its value for both audiences and presenters. Supercharging the audience through simultaneous discussions during presentations.