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Multimodal support to group dynamics

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Abstract

The complexity of group dynamics occurring in small group interactions often hinders the performance of teams. The availability of rich multimodal information about what is going on during the meeting makes it possible to explore the possibility of providing support to dysfunctional teams from facilitation to training sessions addressing both the individuals and the group as a whole. A necessary step in this direction is that of capturing and understanding group dynamics. In this paper, we discuss a particular scenario, in which meeting participants receive multimedia feedback on their relational behaviour, as a first step towards increasing self-awareness. We describe the background and the motivation for a coding scheme for annotating meeting recordings partially inspired by the Bales’ Interaction Process Analysis. This coding scheme was aimed at identifying suitable observable behavioural sequences. The study is complemented with an experimental investigation on the acceptability of such a service.

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Notes

  1. The BSVM tool available at http://www.csie.ntu.edu.tw/∼cjlin/bsvm/

  2. SMIL—Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language—is the standard language for multimodal presentations developed within the W3C. http://www.w3.org/AudioVideo/

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. ITC-irst – Via Sommarive, 18 – 38050, Povo (TN), Italy

    Fabio Pianesi, Massimo Zancanaro, Elena Not, Chiara Leonardi, Vera Falcon & Bruno Lepri

Authors
  1. Fabio Pianesi
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  2. Massimo Zancanaro
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  3. Elena Not
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  4. Chiara Leonardi
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  5. Vera Falcon
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  6. Bruno Lepri
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Fabio Pianesi.

Appendix

Appendix

Here we present the questionnaire and the semantic differential scale used in the acceptability study. They both were in Italian. Table 9

Table 9 Semantic differential
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Questionnaire

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Pianesi, F., Zancanaro, M., Not, E. et al. Multimodal support to group dynamics. Pers Ubiquit Comput 12, 181–195 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00779-007-0144-5

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