The Big Five and Visualisations of Team Work Activity

We have created a set of novel visualisations of group activity: they mirror activity of individuals and their interactions, based upon readily available authentic data. We evaluated these visualisations in the context of a semester long software development project course. We give a theoretical analysis our visualisations’ design using the framework from the “Big 5” theory of team work as well as a qualitative study of the visualizations and the student’s reflective reports. We conclude that these visualizations provide a powerful and valuable mirroring role with potential, when well used, to help groups learn to improve their effectiveness.