Sharing Visual Co-presence of the Task for Monitoring and Acquiring Conversation Meaning

Coordinating in a world of small devices can take many forms. For colocated people, often that is through traditional conversational cues. However, this is more difficult if they are latecomers to a pre-existing conversation. Establishing common ground as a latecomer when everyone has their own small screens is even more difficult. While we are motivated to study this by the needs of students and teachers in classroom group projects, this situation occurs in many work settings. This study presents a network service, Look, which during collaborative activities enables latecomers to share visual co-presence of the task. In particular, the study articulates how in a foreign language learning activity they can, with handheld devices and Look, catch up with an in-progress conversation quickly and efficiently.