Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
restricted by limited access to facial expressions and bodily gestures. Much happens
in a classroom influencing the student teams that is not recorded.
The online setting of the VMT sessions eliminates many of these problems. As
already described, the automatic computer log of the session captures everything
that influences the group as a whole. This includes all the postings and whiteboard
activity, along with their precise timing. They are captured at the same granularity
as they are presented to the students. Chat postings appear as complete messages,
defined by the author pressing the Enter button. Whiteboard textboxes appear
as complete when the author clicks outside of the textbox. Whiteboard graphics
appear gradually, as each graphical element is positioned by the author. Computer-
generated social-awareness messages (when people enter or exit the chat room,
begin or end typing, move a graphical object, etc.) are also accurately recorded. The
precision of the log recording is assured because it consists of the original actions
(as implemented by the computer software) with their timestamps. The original dis-
play to the students is generated from the server using the same log data that are
used by the VMT Replayer. There is no selectivity or interpretation imposed by the
analysts in the preparation of the full session record.
For our analysis of chats, we use a VMT Replayer. The Replayer is simply an
extended version of the Java applet that serves as the chat/whiteboard room in the
Fig. 2.2
The VMT Replayer
