Designing a video-mediated collaboration system based on a body metaphor

Optimum arrangement of communication resources for a distance education system to support collaborative learning, including hand-manipulation of physical objects, was empirically investigated. The authors propose a ‘body metaphor’ concept, which follows the ordinary body arrangement in everyday instruction. It allows: (1) to display instructor’s pointer; (2) to display instructor’s face; (3) to display views of learner’s orientation; (4) to arouse learner’s awareness of being watched by the instructor; and (5) to dispose communication resources apart enough so as to clarify the learner’s orientation. Comparative experiments revealed that body metaphor setting supported smoother collaboration than the conventional face-to-face metaphor setting. Keywords— distance education, CSCW, collaborative learning, ethnomethodology, interaction analysis, video conference