Evaluating Collaboration in Distributed Virtual Environments for a Puzzle-solving Task
Ilona Heldal, Anthony J. Steed, Ralph Schroeder · 2005
There is a wide range of different distributed Virtual Environments (VEs) in use and their areas of application continue to grow. However there is still very little research about factors that contribute to effective collaboration and about how people collaborate in distributed VEs. Existing studies have concentrated on the technical aspects of usability, mostly for single user virtual environments. The purpose of the paper is to discuss the benefits and limitations of different methods for evaluating the effectiveness and experience of collaboration in distributed VEs for a puzzle-solving task. One method is quantitative and based on performance measures and responses to Likertscale type questions. The results obtained with this method can provide valuable insights, but may be limited if the aim is to gauge users ’ experience of collaboration. A second set of methods is qualitative, using, for example, observations of how people collaborate, and analyzing their responses to open-ended questions. The same phenomena can thus be examined from different angles, and this paper presents some of the benefits and drawbacks of using quantitative versus qualitative methods. The results also shed light on the factors contributing to better collaboration for object-focused tasks in distributed VEs with different combinations of technologies. 1