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doi:10.1093/iwc/iwt061
Let’S Talk About Technology for Peace:
A Systematic Assessment of
Problem-Based Group Collaboration
Around an Interactive Tabletop
Andri Ioannou∗, Panayiotis Zaphiris, Fernando Loizides and
Christina Vasiliou
Department of Multimedia and Graphic Arts, Cyprus University of Technology, 94 Anexartisias street,
Iakovides building, 2nd floor, 3040 Limassol, Cyprus
∗
Corresponding author: andri.ioannou@gmail.com; andri.i.ioannou@cut.ac.cy
Thisworkisconcernedwiththeexplorationofideasintherealmoftechnologyforpeace,producedby
small groups of students working around an interactive tabletop.A collaboration-enforcing tabletop
application was used to mediate dialog and collaborative construction of a taxonomy of ideas based
on the participants’ consensus.The scenarios for discussion concerned the promotion of global peace
and the social integration of immigrants in the society. The participants’ dialog and interactions
were video-recorded and analyzed. The study contributes a systematically developed coding scheme
capturing the cognitive and physical elements of problem-based group collaboration around the
interactivetabletop.Also,theconsistentthemesandideascontributedacrosstheparticipatinggroups
highlight a number of areas where research could focus in terms of using technology for peace.
RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS
•We focus on ideas in the realm of technology for peace, which is a domain of interest but rarely addressed
in the field.
•We use multi-touch tabletop technology as a means for promoting dialog and collaboration on a group
artifact.
•We conduct a systematic video analysis of interactions and present a coding scheme of problem-based
group collaboration around an interactive tabletop.
•The themes and ideas contributed across the participating groups highlight areas for research in the realm
of technology for peace.
Keywords: empirical studies in HCI; tables and interactive surfaces; collaborative learning; collaborative
content creation
Editorial Board Member: Juan Pablo Hourcade
Received 22 May 2013; Revised 10 October 2013; Accepted 25 October 2013
1. INTRODUCTION
Peace and immigration are prominent, sensitive issues and
well-studied phenomena in the social sciences. Yet, the learn-
ing/education and Human Computer Interaction (HCI) com-
munities are far behind with engaging in relevant empirical
research. Within a humanitarian approach to education,
‘technology-infusedpeaceinitiativesrelypredominantlyontar-
geting antecedents to peace, such as collaboration, interaction,
communication, and understanding of the “other”, rather than
peace itself’ (Veletsianos and Eliadou, 2009, p. 63). Within
the HCI community, little time and effort have been devoted
to the development of technologies with the explicit goal of
preventing conflict and promoting peace (Hourcade, 2009).
Interacting with Computers,2013
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2Andri Ioannou et al.
Some interest related to peace and the role of technology has
started to appear recently (e.g. Hourcade and Bullock-Rest,
2011;Hourcade et al., 2011,2012;Zancanaro et al., 2012).
As Hourcade and Bullock-Rest (2011) suggest, there are many
opportunities for research in the area of HCI and Peace
including ‘the design of technologies to enable connections
between opposing camps, tools to present news stories from
several points of view, and technologies to support interna-
tionalmonitoringmissions to preventtheescalation of conflicts’
(p. 443).
Meanwhile, multi-touch interactive tabletops have been
extensively discussed in the HCI and learning communities
for their potential to support collaboration and learning. In
additionto the already researched affordances of the technology
(e.g. enhancing sense of teamwork (Morris et al., 2006),
increasing engagement in ‘creative conflict’ (Basheri et al.,
2013), ‘inviting’ interaction and willingness to participate
(Rogers and Lindley, 2004), etc.), this work considers the
technology as ‘peace-enforcing’ by design and pertinent to
group work on peace-related tasks. That is, the technology
allows for participants’ ‘power’ to be shared and distributed
over a shared display, while it directs attention to a shared goal
(Fleck et al., 2009). Friedman et al. (as cited in Hourcade,
2009) found that, in conflict situations, people who take into
account the interests of all parties experience less conflict
than those who attempt to dominate. In this sense, the
distributed ‘power’ over a shared tabletop display ‘forces’
the participants to take into account the interests of the
‘other’.
Definitions of ‘peace’ abound (see review byVeletsianos and
Eliadou,2009).Adheringto a single definitionwas not intended
in this work. Rather, the present study is concerned with the
exploration of general ideas in the realm of technology for
peace, produced by small groups of students working around
an interactive tabletop. The activity involved brainstorming,
dialog and collaborative construction of a taxonomy of ideas
on the use of technology for peace. In this sense, technology
for peace was inclusive of discussion of any intervention
or tool aimed at ‘promoting interfaith dialog, multicultural
communication and understanding, and respect for diversity’
(VeletsianosandEliadou,2009,p.64).We explored tworesearch
directions:
— Howcanwesystematically assess problem-based group
collaboration around an interactive tabletop?
— What themes relevant to technology for peace are
demonstrated across groups?
We start by covering related research literature and continue
with a brief report on the functionality of the application and its
use in our empirical investigation. The paper concludes with a
discussion of the key findings and implications of this work for
future research and practice.
2. EXISTING KNOWLEDGE
2.1. Technology for peace
The most recent systematic review on the use of technology
to promote peace and humanitarianism was conducted by
Veletsianos and Eliadou (2009). The review revealed that a
few (educational) technologies have been used in interventions
associated with the promotions of peace such as: (i) learning
management systems and virtual learning environments to
host learning activities, (ii) Web 2.0 technologies (blogs,
wikis, social networking sites and video sharing sites)
as well as email and video conferencing to promote
collaboration communication, diversity and international
cooperation between conflicting parties and (iii) online and
video (serious) games and MMORPGs to promote exposure
to diverse populations and collaborative learning through
social interaction (e.g. the PeaceMaker video game by Burak
et al. (2005), which simulates the Israeli–Palestinian conflict
and engages learners in negotiating peace), among other
technologies (see review by Veletsianos and Eliadou (2009)).
Yet, the discussion on how to use technology to promote global
peace seems to revolve mainly around internet technologies,
while the use of technology in collocated settings is relatively
unexplored.
Thereisaverylimitedamountofstudiesexploringcollocated
collaboration in the domain of peace. One example is Stock
et al.’s (2008) design of a multi-touch tabletop application
for joint narration, as a tool for reconciliation between two
conflicting sides. The so-called Negotiation Table allows
multimedia narrations to be contributed from both sides, who
then act jointly toward achieving a narration acceptable to
both viewpoints (i.e. by revising and completing the narration
together). Initially, the interface was used by Jewish–Arab pairs
of youth; it was found successful in helping young people from
the two sides reach a compromise and all participants expressed
a general satisfaction (and sometimes even a surprise) with
learning more about their partner’s viewpoints (Stock et al.,
2008). In a follow-up investigation, the interface was used
with 39 pairs of Jewish–Arab male youth with similar positive
findings (Zancanaro et al., 2012).
2.2. Tabletops and collaboration
The potential of multi-touch interactive tables to support
collaboration and group work has been discussed in a few
studies to date. A table that handles multiple simultaneous
touch inputs is considered to enable collaboration by allowing
different patterns of turn taking, negotiation and interaction
(Harris et al., 2009;Buisine et al., 2012). Furthermore, it
has been suggested that multi-touch tabletops enhance users’
sense of teamwork (Morris et al., 2006), increase learners’
engagement in ‘creative conflict’(Basheri et al., 2013), ‘invite’
interaction and willingness to participate (Rogers and Lindley,
2004), increase equity in physical interaction compared with
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Let’s Talk About Technology for Peace 3
other devices (Marshall et al., 2008), promote joint attention
on the task (Fleck et al., 2009;Higgins et al., 2011), encourage
playfulness in interaction (Piper and Hollan, 2009;Jamil, 2011)
andimprovethe (learning) experience and motivationtoengage
in the task (Buisine et al., 2012;Ioannou and Christofi, 2013)
among others.
A variety of applications have already been developed for
multi-touch tabletops to research how children and adults
interact around this technology and how it can support
collocated collaboration in educational settings. One such
application is the StoryTable, which was found to enforce
cooperation during storytelling activity and the development of
narratives with high cohesion (Cappelletti et al., 2004).Another
one is OurSpace, engaging young children in a collaborative
design of a seating plan for their classroom (Marshall et al.,
2009). Studies of OurSpace provided evidence for the added
value of a multi-touch interface compared with a single-touch
interface with regard to the quality of talk. In particular, the
researchers found that children engaged in more task-focused
talk in the multi-touch condition and more turn-taking talk in
the single-touch condition (Harris et al., 2009). More recent
investigations of OurSpace have discussed mechanisms for
coordinating joined attention and collaboration during tabletop
interaction (Fleck, 2009). For example, joint attention can
be maintained using techniques such as ‘undoing’ of others’
actions and allowing for intrusions (Fleck, 2009), as well as
enforcing turn-taking and joint-actions (Piper et al., 2006;
Piper and Hollan, 2009). Furthermore, a series of studies have
been conducted by the SynergyNet project team, focused on
tabletop collaboration and learning within small groups in K-
12 (Higgins et al., 2011). The researchers contrasted groups of
children in multi-touch and paper-based conditions to examine
the differences in their collaborative learning strategies and
found that groups in the multi-touch condition maintained
better joint attention on the task (Higgins et al., 2011). Last
but not least, in higher education, Basheri et al. (2013) found
that a collaborative design application (UML diagramming)
runningonamulti-touchtabletopallowedforincreasedphysical
interaction, learner engagement and ‘creative conflict’ (i.e.
arguing and disagreeing directed at ideas rather than people),
compared with a same application running on a PC.
2.3. Understanding collaboration around the tabletop
To date, very few papers present a systematic classification
of participants’ dialog and interactions around a tabletop.
Where such an analysis is presented, the focus is on the
physical interaction patterns aiming to inform the design of
the collaborative interface, for example, coding the styles of
collaborative coupling (Tang et al., 2006), coding the behaviors
relevant to orientation (Kruger et al., 2004) and coding the
behaviorsrelevanttoawareness(Hornecker,2008),whereasthe
verbal interactions are of less concern in most tabletop studies.
A systematic classification of discourse (verbal) categories was
undertaken in only a couple of recent studies such as Shaer
et al.’s study (2011) of genomic learning around tabletops and
Jamil et al.’s (2011) study of communication patterns around
different kinds of tabletop interaction techniques.Yet, a coding
scheme capturing the kinds of discourse and interactions during
tabletop collaboration on problem-based scenarios is currently
lacking.
Previous collaborative learning research has contributed
coding schemes mainly for the small group interaction in
distributed learning settings (see, for example, the review of
coding schemes by De Wever et al., 2006). In this case,
successful collaborative discourse is generally characterized
by (i) contributions of content and ideas related to the
group task, (ii) reflections and cognitive and meta-cognitive
exchanges (asking question, exchanging conflicting opinions
and providing explanations) and (c) evidence of knowledge
construction, i.e. having new insights as a result of the
discussion, making connections and synthesizing information
(e.g. Hmelo-Silver, 2003;Stahl, 2006).Although it would make
sense that good collaboration in distributed learning settings
would share similar characteristics with good collaboration
around tabletops, there is less (if any) evidence of a systematic
analysis of the participants’ dialog and interactions in the
second.
In sum, this study aimed to explore ideas in the realm of
technology for peace; a domain of interest to the learning and
HCI research communities, but for which research is lacking.
On the basis of a previous work, we deemed a multi-touch
interactive tabletop to be the most suited interface to the
objectives of this study, providing a shared workspace for co-
located collaboration and coordination for the discussion of
peace ideas. In addition to the affordances of the technology
discussed earlier (e.g. enhancing sense of teamwork, increasing
learners’ engagement in ‘creative conflict’, etc.), we consider
the technology as ‘peace-enforcing’ by design. That is, the
technology allows for participants’ ‘power’ to be shared and
distributed over a shared display (vs. issues of power leading
people to conflict and war), while it directs attention to a shared
goal(Fleck et al., 2009).It thus, becomes pertinentto mediating
talkabout peace. Overall,weexplored tworesearchdirections:
— Howcan wesystematically assess problem-based group
collaboration around an interactive tabletop?
— What themes relevant to technology for peace are
demonstrated across groups?
3. METHOD
3.1. Participants
A total of 38 students (Greek Cypriots) from a public university
in Southern Cyprus voluntarily participated in this study. These
were BA, MA or PhD students aged between 22 and 45 years
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4Andri Ioannou et al.
Figure 1. Students typing initial ideas for discussion.
(M=28). The participants formed 10 groups of 3–4 students
per group, suitable for a four-sided multi-touch tabletop.
3.2. The tabletop application
IdeasMappingis a tabletop application designed to supportidea
generation, collaborative decision-making and group artifact
construction. The application allows the participants to analyze
aproblemand actively construct ataxonomyoftheirideasbased
on their consensus on how to tackle the given problem. The
application builds on the principle of Affinity Diagramming—
anHCI technique used to facilitate discussion and collaboration
in groups and to extract ideas from users’ initial conceptual
models.The technique lets users write downitemsofknowledge
or descriptions on sticky notes and then organize the notes into
groups before creating group headings. It is enforced in small
teams usually working on a shared whiteboard or large piece of
paper (Zaphiris et al., 2013).
3.2.1. Ideas mapping works in three stages
Stage 1 Each collaborator generates initial ideas for discussion
(i.e. brainstorming) concerning how to tackle a given problem.
Ideas are typed into a web application through the use of a
mobile device such as a laptop or tablet (see Fig. 1).
Stage 2 The ideas are presented one-by-one, as digital post-it
notes in the middle of the tabletop surface, and become subject
to discussion among the collaborators (i.e. negotiation). Post-
it notes are randomly presented and automatically oriented to
face their contributor ‘inviting’him/her to elaborate on the idea.
This feature aims to encourage turn taking (e.g. Piper et al.,
2006;Piper and Hollan, 2009), as well as to enable democratic
decision-making by allowing equal opportunities for everyone
to share and clarify their ideas. Upon discussion of each idea,
collaborators make an effort to categorize it in a thematic unit—
thematic units can be created by any participant (Fig. 2).
Stage 3 Participants finalize their taxonomy by editing ideas
or generating new ones, deleting ideas or thematic units that
are less promising and relocating ideas into thematic units for
a better fit (i.e. negotiation and collaborative construction of a
group artifact). The application encourages ‘undoing’of others’
actions and re-thinking of the placement of the ideas, thus
promotingjointattention and awareness (e.g. Fleck et al., 2009).
The resulting taxonomy reflects the participants’ consensus on
how to tackle the problem (Fig. 3).
3.3. Procedures
There were two problem-based scenarios in the study. Five
groups participated in the global peace scenario and another
five participated in the immigration scenario.
The scenario for the global peace study was: ‘Your team
works at a non-governmental organization dealing with global
peace. Your project is to create a taxonomy of your ideas
regarding how we can promote global peace using technology’.
This topic was considered to be personally important to our
participants and one that could elicit their mental engagement.
This is because Cyprus is a country in a long lasting ethnic
conflict where Turkish Cypriots (T/Cs) live in the northern part
oftheislandandGreek Cypriots (G/Cs) liveinthesouthernpart,
since1974. Until recently,citizens of the twocommunities have
not been allowed to freely cross the ceasefire line, controlled
by the United Nations Force in Cyprus. In the last few years,
restrictions have been lifted, but real communication and face-
to-faceinteraction between T/C and G/C is still limited. Because
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Let’s Talk About Technology for Peace 5
Figure 2. Categorization of ideas in thematic units.
Figure 3. Finalizing consensus taxonomy of ideas.
discussingethnic-relatedissuesinCyprusoftenleadsto tension,
anxiety and strong disagreement (linked to politics), in this
study we avoided framing the topic as ‘Peace in Cyprus’.
Instead, we used the high level topic of ‘global peace’assuming
it remained personally important to our participants.
The scenario for the immigration study was: ‘Your team
works at a non-governmental organization dealing with
immigration issues. Your project is to create a taxonomy of
your views and ideas regarding how we can promote the social
integration of immigrants in Cyprus using technology’. Cyprus
is a country experiencing increased immigration during the
last two decades, with a large part of its human resources
and population in general, now being non-Cypriot. This has
caught the Cyprus society unprepared for the challenges and
opportunitiesthatimmigrantsbring to the island, while the ever-
growing incidents of xenophobia, discrimination and racism
become a great concern. As such, promoting the immigrants’
social integration was also considered personally important to
the Cypriot participants of this study.
Stage 1 of Ideas Mapping was completed in distance,
during the week before students engaged in group work. This
preparatory week aimed to allow students to think about the
given scenario at their own pace and record their initial ideas
into the Ideas Mapping web application. The rest of the activity
involved co-located collaboration around the tabletop. Each
group met face-to-face and engaged in collaborative work as
describedin Stages 2 and 3of Ideas Mapping. Studentsengaged
in discussion and physical interaction with the tabletop in an
effort to categorize the different views and ideas into thematic
units (Stage 2, see Fig. 1) and to finally construct a taxonomy
of how global peace/social integration of immigrants can be
promoted using technology (Stage 3, see Fig. 3).
The sessions of all groups were video-recorded for sub-
sequent analysis. Approximately8hofvideo was recorded,
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6Andri Ioannou et al.
with groups taking between 40 and 60 min to complete the
task.
4. ANALYSIS AND RESULTS
Later we provide details on how we conducted a sys-
tematic video analysis of interactions resulting to a cod-
ing scheme of problem-based group collaboration around
an interactive tabletop. We then describe how collaboration
was further assessed using a coding-and-counting approach.
Last, the taxonomies constructed by the groups were eval-
uated for consistent themes pertinent to technology for
peace.
4.1. Video analysis and coding scheme
All utterances and physical actions in the global peace dataset
(Groups 1–5) were transcribed to assist further coding. Then,
two researchers worked closely together to segment the video
corpus into collaboration acts (i.e. units of meaning); 117
collaboration acts were defined to exist.
Typically, a collaboration act involved the discussion of an
idea until a decision was made about its placement in (or
deletion from) a thematic category. For example, in Stage
2, ideas were typically explained by their originator and
then all group members engaged in clarifying, discussing
and categorizing the idea. As such, almost every new idea
in Stage 2 produced a collaboration act, as illustrated later
(Group 4). Then in Stage 3, ideas and categories were revisited
in order to be refined, thus leading to more collaboration
acts.
P1: ‘Online protest against human rights violations’ (P1
reads the post-it note aloud).
P3: But how?
P1: Online...using forums to scheduled online events.
P3: Can we categorise this as ‘tech for information sharing’
[category title]?
P1: No, not ‘information sharing’. I see it as a social event
to help raise awareness.
P2: Yes, ‘tech for planning social events’. Sharing
informationis one thing and organizinganonlineprotest
is another thing.
P3: True.
The two researchers used ∼15% of the collaboration acts
for the development of the coding scheme in context (i.e. on
the basis of the video data). The coding scheme of the study is
illustrated in Table 1; it includes seven categories of cognitive
and physical contributions around the tabletop.
Following the development of the coding scheme, the two
researchers independently coded the utterances and physical
actions of the remaining (85%) of the collaboration acts.
The percent agreement between the coders was 92%, and the
Table 1. Coding scheme—cognitive and physical contributions
around the tabletop.
Cognitive contributions
1. Proposing—proposing a new idea or thematic unit
2. Elaborating—clarifying, building on previous statements
3. Negotiating meaning—evaluation of proposal,
questioning/answering, expressing agreement/disagreement,
providing arguments for/against
4. Stating consensus—summary of ideas, metacognitive
reflections
5. Other talk—tool-related talk, social talk, laughter
Physical contributions
6. Communicative gestures—show on the table without
touching, dominating/blocking gestures
7. Touch gestures—resize, rotate, type, move something across,
random touching or touching to explore
Cohen’skappa statistic (a chance-corrected index of agreement)
was 0.84.
Table 2presents short transcripts of collaboration acts to
demonstrate how the coding scheme was applied and what
aspects of the video content constitute evidence for each coding
category. As shown later, the categories were not mutually
exclusive; that is more than one code could be assigned to
a collaboration act. Proposing and elaborating, for example,
often occurred together when participants aimed to explain
their ideas to others. Moreover, cognitive contributions were,
almost always, accompanied by physical contributions, mainly
communicative gestures to ground them, consistent with Fleck
et al.’s (2009) finding that children’s talk and physical gestures
were commonly coupled during group work in OurSpace.
The same two researchers proceeded with coding the verbal
and gestural contributions in the videos of the immigration
scenario (Groups 6–10), after transcription of the corpus and
segmentation into collaboration acts (168 collaboration acts).
The coding scheme of Table 1fitted the new data corpus
well, suggesting the applicability of the coding scheme in this
context and possibly in other similar contexts. The agreement
between the coders was again high (93% agreement, Cohen’s
kappa =0.84).
4.2. Assessment of collaboration via counting the codes
and turns
The tabletop collaboration was further assessed by counting the
cognitive and physical contributions in each group, as well as
quantifying the turn-taking behavior.
Figure 4presents the distribution of cognitive and physical
contributions across groups. The result provides evidence
that the vast majority of contributions were task focused. In
particular, the 117 and 168 collaboration acts found in the
peaceandimmigrations videos, respectively,involvedcognitive
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Let’s Talk About Technology for Peace 7
Table 2. Application of the coding scheme.
Coding Collaboration act (unit of analysis) Comments
Proposing P1: ‘Diminishing of digital divide’(P1 reads post-it
note aloud). I was thinking here that access to
technology and especially the Internet is linked
to the educational level of the people, and it is
also somehow linked to whether the county is
developed, developing or underdeveloped. I am
thinking that getting people access to
technology helps them develop and be equal,
and this promotes peace indirectly (touch
gestures and communicative gestures occur).
Some ideas were proposed and elaborated by their
contributor, then accepted and acknowledged
without further negotiation (Group 3, Stage 2).
Elaborating P3: I see what you are saying.
Gestures
Stating consensus P2: Very good idea, I would put it in the ‘Equal
Rights and Access’category (touch gestures
occur while P2 categorizes the idea)
Proposing P1: ‘September 25th is the World Day of Peace’
(P1 reads post-it note aloud; touch gestures
occur).
Yet, it was not also usual for ideas to be
questioned and evaluated more critically
(Group 3, Stage 2).
Negotiating Meaning P2: But where does the technology come in this
idea?
P1:You may use technology for the promotion of
this day, which many of us don’t know!
(Communicative Gestures)
P3: It reminds me of Google. It changes its logo to
celebrate some days of the year. This is in fact a
very good idea.
Stating consensus P1: Now I see ...but the use of technology was not
clear initially.
P2: Well, I made it clear now (laughter).
P1: How should we categorize it? It is quite general.
‘Tech for informing?’, ‘Tech for promoting
events?’
Gestures [...]
Negotiating Meaning P1: ‘Protest via technological means’ (P1 reads the
category title aloud; touch gestures occur). Ideas and their placement in particular categories
were critically evaluated in Stage 3, for
example here Group 4 reviewed the ideas
within a category to ensure good fit.
P2: ‘collecting signatures’, ‘discussing events of
violence’...(P2 reads aloud ideas categorized
here).
P1: We need to remember the topic continuously ...
promoting global peace using technology.
‘Protest via technological means’. Is this a way
of promoting peace?
P3: Wait a minute. What [ideas] do we have in here?
P1: ‘commenting on violence on forums and wikis’
...(P1 reads more ideas aloud).
continued.
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Table 2. continued.
Coding Collaboration act (unit of analysis) Comments
Stating consensus P3: Should we change the title [of the category] to
‘tech for information exchange’or something?
P1: ‘tech for communication’ is better.
Gestures P2:Yes, better.
Proposing P2: ‘Use social networks to organize a flashmob
event to support global peace’(P2 reads post-it
note aloud).
Limited off task talk was present in all groups,
often together with cognitive contributions
(Group 2, Stage 2).
Negotiating P4: What is a flashmob?
Meaning P2: Let me explain (smile). Basically we can create
teams in a blog, and these teams will meet one
day to perform in the middle of an avenue. They
may be signing, acting…
Other Talk P1: Are you distracted by ‘[famous singer’s name]’
(laughter)
P2: I am serious, I have seen this! My daughter
participated, and my cousin and other I know
(laughter).
P3: Is this a social event?
[...]
Figure 4. The distribution of cognitive contributions across groups.
elements (e.g. proposing ideas, elaborating, questions and
answers), almost always accompanied by communicative and
touch gestures. Instead, off-task talk (e.g. social, laughter)
was <10% of the discourse in each group. It is also
worth pointing to how most of this cognitive talk involved
elaboration of ideas, which was encouraged by the application
and the orientation of the ideas to face their contributor
(Stage 2).
Furthermore, Fig. 5presents the participation of the
individual group members in terms of turn taking (Groups
1–5 for global peace and Groups 6–10 for immigration);
that is, we counted the number of times each individual
‘spoke’ during the discussion of the scenario and construction
of their group taxonomy (40 to 60 min depending on the
group). The result provides evidence that all group members
participated in the task and that turn-taking behavior was well
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Let’s Talk About Technology for Peace 9
Figure 5. Participants’ turn-taking behavior.
served by Ideas Mapping. Perhaps more important is that
participation was fairly equal within the groups as shown by
a series of chi-square-goodness-of-fit tests (chi-square values
between 1.6 and 5.8 with Pvalue >0.05), with the exception
of only one group (Group 5 discussing peace) that had
statistically significantly unequal participation at 0.01 alpha
level (χ2(3)=25.1, P<.001).
With our systematic development of a coding scheme,
followedby countingthe codes and turns, weassessedproblem-
based group collaboration around an interactive tabletop. In
sum, we have evidence that all participants were able to
cognitively engage in the task for the duration of the activity.
4.3. Themes across the taxonomies
The taxonomies constructed by the groups were explored for
consistent themes with regard to possible uses of technology
for the promotion of global peace and social integration of
immigrants in Cyprus. For both global peace and immigration
scenarios,therewasa significant overlap in the general thematic
categories formulated across groups and the ideas included
within the categories. Of course, each group had a few unique
ideas and in a few cases, similar ideas were categorized
differently by different groups, as a result of the negotiation
process and the views of the participants in the group. In Fig. 6,
we present the consistent themes contributed across groups (by
‘consistent’ we mean themes presented in the taxonomies of at
least three groups—see parentheses in Fig. 6for the number of
groups having the theme). Also, Tables 3and 4list the most
persistent and discussed ideas within these themes.
Finally, we conducted a meta-review of the themes and
ideas across both studies—peace and immigration. We found
Figure 6. Themes across taxonomies.
that all ideas revolve around, and can be consolidated into,
three larger dimensions: (i) the use of technology to promote
peace-related outcomes, for example, the use of YouTube to
broadcastfavorableimages of the‘other’(foe or immigrant) and
to promote awareness of their culture, (ii) the use of technology
to promote empowerment, for example, enabling access to
technology in order to ‘include’ the children of the developing
world/immigrants and enable a means for them to learn and
be included and (iii) the use of technology for understanding
conflict, for example, promoting discussion and collaboration
on conflict resolution among the conflicting parties using
weblogs, wikis, etc.
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10 Andri Ioannou et al.
Table 3. Persistent ideas on using technology for Global Peace.
Theme Most persistent and discussed ideas
Using technology for information sharing and raising
awareness.
•Host new web pages about world peace
•Start a mailing list to distribute messages about world peace
•Produce and shareYouTube videos on world peace
•Start forums, blogs and social networks for the discussion of peace and the
distribution of multimedia content related to the consequences of war
Using technology for peace education. •Develop educational MMOGs with peace related missions
•Develop2D and 3D simulations abouttheconsequences of war (i.e. a simulation
of the Earth as it would look without wars).
•Use ICT to allow children from schools around the globe to collaborate on
WebQuests,poetry,storytelling, artandphotography onthetopic ofworldpeace.
Technology for conflict management. •Develop special social networks platforms aiming to match and ‘friend’people
of different cultures and political stands with ultimate goal to socialize and learn
from each other.
•Develop technology applications (e.g. Facebook apps, mobile device apps and
tabletop apps) aiming the facilitation of conflict resolution.
Technology for diminishing inequalities. •Eliminate digital divide (i.e. helping all households gain access to the Internet)
promotes peace indirectly.
Technology for organizing events. •Organize protests and other peace related events in virtual worlds (e.g. Second
Life) that will attract users but also media attention.
•Organizea large massgroupof people for street protests oronlineactions related
to peace.
Table 4. Persistent ideas on using technology for the social integration of the immigrants of Cyprus.
Theme Most persistent and discussed ideas
Technology for intercultural education. •Online courses on learning the Greek language for adult immigrants.
•Online tutorials for basic skills, such as understanding the road signs and rules.
•Online seminars for immigrants to learn more about the Cypriot culture.
•Educational software for school children (locals) to learn about the cultures of
the immigrants of Cyprus and vice versa.
•Group activities in schools settings that encourage immigrants and locals to
work together.
•Online support teams for immigrants.
Technology for communication. •Forums where immigrants and locals can exchange views in a peaceful spirit
and learn how their common humanity could be useful.
•Social networks for young people to ‘friend’ and learn more about their
immigrant peers.
Technology for providing services and
information sharing.
•An inclusive website focused on immigrants’ needs related to their stay in
Cyprus, including information about services, life, transportation, visas/work
permissions, questions, answers, etc.
Technology for organizing events/entertainment. •Organize groups of immigrants to participate in Cyprus local events (e.g. a
presence at the Carnival festival).
•Organizegame festivalswhere localsandimmigrants share wishesandemotions
on interactive displays and play console games together with an emphasis on
learning more about each other’s culture and language.
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Let’s Talk About Technology for Peace 11
5. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
In this study, we aimed to explore ideas in the realm of
technology for peace—a domain of interest to the research
community but for which research is lacking. Tabletop
technology was employed considering its already researched
affordances and also seeing it as ‘peace-enforcing’ by design.
The study focused on the systematic assessment of problem-
based group collaboration around the interactive tabletop
and on extracting themes relevant to technology for peace
demonstrated across groups. Our findings provide interesting
insights and directions for future work.
First, this study contributes to the literature with regard
to a systematically developed coding scheme capturing the
cognitive and physical interactions (among the participants
and the technology) evident during collaboration on problem-
based scenarios around a tabletop. A systematic classification
of discourse was undertaken in a couple of previous studies
(i.e. Shaer et al., 2011;Jamil et al., 2011), but with a different
research focus; thus, our coding scheme is unique in the context
of problem-based tabletop collaboration. Our coding scheme
was systematically developed and used with one dataset (global
peace scenario), then applied and reused in another dataset
(immigration scenario). This provides some evidence for its
applicability in this context and possibly other similar settings.
We suggest, this scheme can be applied and extended to more
studies in the area.
Second, the coding scheme constitutes evidence that
collocated, tabletop collaboration in the context of this study
shares similar characteristic with small group collaboration
in distributed learning settings. In particular, successful
collaboration in distributed learning settings is characterized by
contributions of content, cognitive/ meta-cognitive exchanges
(e.g. asking question, exchanging conflicting opinions) among
others. The participants of this study demonstrated analogous
discourse (e.g. proposing ideas, elaborating, questions and
answers). We believe our systematically developed coding
scheme is a step toward bridging the gap between co-located
and distributed collaborative learning research.
Third, on the basis of previous work, we deemed an
interactive tabletop to be the most suited interface for the study,
providing a shared workspace for co-located collaboration on
peace ideas. The participants’engagement with the task and the
numerous cognitive and physical, task-focused contributions
provide some evidence for this assumption. Yet, it is possible
that a novelty effect can explain the participants’engagement,
and only a longitudinal study would be able to shed light on
this finding. Also, without a control condition (i.e. experimental
design), we cannot be certain about the added value of the
technology. Perhaps, similar participation and collaboration
could have taken place with a simple brainstorming activity,
without a tabletop.
Furthermore, this work considered the technology as ‘peace-
enforcing’ by design, allowing ‘power’ to be shared and
distributed over a shared display, thus becoming pertinent to
group work on peace-related tasks. This idea also found some
premise in our data. The participants not only demonstrated
turn-taking behavior during their collaboration but also
participated fairly equally within their groups. An interesting
future direction would be to investigate how tabletops ‘share
power’ between real conflicting parties—such as Turkish with
Greek Cypriots and immigrant with nonimmigrants—while
they collaborate on a shared goal around a tabletop (e.g. Stock
et al., 2008). Although we have avoided this authentic (but
potentially problematic) setting to date, it is definitely a case
worth perusing in future works and should be of interest to the
research community.
In the same spirit, future work should explore how tabletops
(and associated applications) can be tailored to mediate
collaboration on sensitive and controversial issues. In the
present study, even though our scenarios were considered
‘personallyimportant’to the participants, there wasnoevidence
of tension, anxiety or strong disagreement, which are often
linked to discussions of sensitive and controversial issues.
One could suggest that our participants did not experience
the scenarios as ‘sensitive’ or ‘controversial’ even though
they may have been ‘personally important’ to them. On the
other side of the coin however, one could think that tabletops
encourage playfulness in interaction (Piper and Hollan, 2009;
Jamil et al., 2011), which may have made the activity fun,
rather than emotional, especially considering the social talk and
laughter evident during the activity (see Table 1and Fig. 5).
We simply do not know; our current dataset cannot support
the testing of these hypotheses. Future investigations in this
direction should measure the ‘sensitivity’ of the scenarios for
theparticipants and also compareto a clear notsensitivecase, in
order to address the technology effect in this case, if one exits.
Certainly, collaboration on sensitive and controversial issues
around tabletop should be an interesting area for research in the
field.
Furthermore, the study may be suggesting the use of
problem-basedscenarios around peace and immigration as good
collaborative activities that also serve an important purpose.
Not only students produced and discussed numerous ideas on
the topic, but also collaborated well in constructing consensus
taxonomies.That is,forthe duration of the activity (40–60 min),
they were activity engaged in the task as evident from their
discourse and interactions (e.g. see Table 1) and the numerous
collaboration acts and turns. Yet again, we need experimental
studies in future investigations to factor out other plausible
explanationsfor these results (e.g. noveltyeffectandtechnology
effect).
Last but not least, the study contributes a list of consolidated
themes, but also individual ideas, in the realm of technology for
peace. A further meta-review of the participants’ contribution
across both scenarios (peace and immigrations) offered
three larger dimensions in this arena. These themes and
dimensions enrich the results of the recent systematic review by
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12 Andri Ioannou et al.
Veletsianos and Eliadou (2009), which only emphasized the use
oftechnology for educational tasks(learning activities) relevant
to peace. More importantly, these themes and dimensions
provide insights pertinent to future research in the HCI and
learning communities concerning the use of technology for
peace.
Closing, although this work is by no means complete, we can
summarize four tentative implications of our initial findings for
future research and practice.
1. The systematically developed coding scheme of the
study can be applied (and extended) to more studies
in the area.
2. The consistent themes and ideas contributed across the
participating groups highlight a number of areas where
research could focus in terms of using technology for
peace.
3. Problem-basedscenariosaroundpeaceandimmigration
may be good collaborative activities, while serving an
important purpose.
4. Multi-touch interactive tabletops and associated appli-
cations can be tailored to facilitate collaboration on a
shared goal. Cases of tabletop collaboration with con-
flicting parties and sensitive/controversial issues are
worth exploring.
Overall, this study calls for further research on peace and
technology in the education and HCI arenas, while taking
advantage of current technologies that are ‘peace-enforcing’by
design.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This project was partially funded by the Cyprus Research
Promotion Foundation (DESMI 2009-2010), under the
“Bilateral Cooperation” between Cyprus and Slovenia
(IAKPATIKE/KY-/∧O/0411).
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