Supporting Dynamic Situation Awareness in Online Group Discussion: A Visualization Approach

Situation awareness (SA) has been well recognized as a critical yet often elusive foundation for effective group decision-making. The task of identifying and understanding dynamic, evolving discussion situation can be quite challenging, especially when coping with information overload and time pressure. With the wide adoption of collaborative software in support of group collaboration, there has been exponential growth of online group discussion. As a result, the traditional thread-based hierarchical structure and presentation of group messages become ineffective in support of real-time SA, which may affect the process and outcome of group collaboration. To address this important problem, in this study, we propose a novel visualization-based approach to supporting users' SA in online group discussion and decision making. We have also developed a set of new variables to measure SA in online group discussion from three key aspects: discussion snapshot, discussion evolution, and people. The proposed approach was empirically evaluated by using a prototype system and discussion data collected from an online group discussion session. The results show that the proposed approach significantly improves user performance and perception of SA in group discussion. The findings of this study provide significant research contributions and practical implications for the design and use of situation-aware collaborative software.