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262 Selected Studies on Software and Information Systems
port individual learning, propose shifting to collaborative learning, and negotiate to form
a group of learners with suitable role assignment, based on the learners' information from
individual learning. Authors devise the Learning Goal Ontology (LGO) that accommodates
learning goals of several learning theories such as learning by observing others, learning by
self-expression, learning by teaching, and learning by diagnosing. Furthermore, LGO describes
dependencies between individual a whole-group goals, and thus is used as a rationale for
forming appropriate groups.
Another interesting method of repeated group formation is described in (Supnithi,
1999) where students represented by agents bid in an iterative Vickrey auction to join their
favorite group. Agents utilize virtual currency earned from previous collaborative activities.
After each completed activity, agents are rewarded with virtual currency depending
on their individual and group performance based on peer evaluations. Better achieving
students receiving more are thereby capable to bid for the future membership in their favorite
groups more successfully. This auctioning group-formation mechanism is also utilized
in the I-MINDS system (Soh, 2006).
9.2.2 Group Evolution
Once the group participants are selected they can engage in a collaborative activity. In this
section we describe how the interactions within the group affect the participating users
and the group itself.
It is widely recognized that during their lifetime groups undergo an evolutionary
process in which they become efficient teams. More than 100 theories of group development
exist to date, the most prominently cited one being the Tuckman and Jensen's stages
of group development (Tuckman, 1977) consisting of five stages:
1. Forming – group members get to know each other and the task to be solved. They can
feel uneasy not knowing what is required and how the group will function.
2. Storming – when things get “stormy”, individual differences surface and conflicts
emerge, and roles of the participants and the group structure is put to question.
3. Norming – after resolving these problems the group starts to function harmoniously,
establishes rules, and group members start to support each other.
4. Performing – at this stage rules are well in place, group is doing the work on the
common task the way it is supposed to do.
5. Adjourning – group retires as the project ends, feedback on the group performance facilitates
learning.
Different groups may spend different amounts of time in each of the stages but the theory
suggests that all groups pass sequentially through all these stages.
Face-by-face vs. Computer-mediated Groups
Group evolution is the subject of extensive study in psychology and social sciences; called
group dynamics that is examining how people work in small groups. For an up-to-date
treatment of group dynamics and teamwork see (Forsyth, 2006; Levi, 2007). We briefly
mention main differences between face-to-face groups and computer-mediated groups.