Exploring the Impact of a Tabletop-Generated Group Work Feedback on Students' Collaborative Skills

This study explores the impact of a tabletop-generated feedback on student’s collaborative skills over time. Twenty-one Computer Science students participated in a threeweek experimentation. A two-group design was used to assess three dimensions of collaboration: contributions, communication and respect. While the experimental group was asked to solve a database design problem using a tabletop system and received human and automatic feedback afterwards, the control group was asked to use a paper-based approach for the same task and received human feedback only. Results showed no significant difference between both groups, neither in their levels of group work skills, nor in the students’ selfperception of their group work skills Nonetheless, there was an improvement over the whole experience on the communication dimension on the experimental group. Likewise, both conditions showed a significant improvement on students’ self-perception of their group work skills. In addition, a positive moderate correlation between the automatic and human assessment of students’ contributions to group work was found. This confirms opportunities to further explore tabletop-based feedback for group work activities.