Awareness in Networked Collaborative Environment: A Comparative Study on the Usage of Digital Elements

This paper presents a comparative study on the usage of digital elements in networked collaborative virtual environments (NCVE). The focus of this study is to explore the characteristic of digital elements that promote social awareness. Social awareness is defined as the understanding of a contextual situation at a present time. In networked collaborative virtual environments (NCVE), awareness plays an important role for achieving an effective digital communication. For a particular virtual situation, participants should be aware of the people whom they are interacting with, their responsibilities and contributions, the collaboration activities involved and their progress level. This paper discusses about the digital elements that are used to support awareness during virtual collaboration. We compare various elements such as text, 2D graphic, 3D avatar and audio-video and their specific roles in contributing to awareness. With the main focus on social awareness, eight types of awareness models (presence, turn taking, emotion, identities, state, status/role, contextual and conversational) are identified with respect to these digital elements. The impacts of using each digital element in various applications are also identified in order to enhance the usage of these elements when they are applied to their relevant networked collaborative applications. Thus, with appropriate use of digital elements, awareness in such situation can be improved. Key-Words: Networked Collaborative Virtual Environment (NCVE), Digital elements, Social Awareness, Awareness Models, Communication, Collaborative Applications