Developing an interactive tabletop mediated activity to induce collaboration by implementing design considerations based on cooperative learning principles

Abstract

Constructive collaboration can be a difficult matter. For this reason, we are implementing and studying an interactive-tabletop-mediated activity that aims at inducing collaboration among participants. The resulting activity ‘Orbitia’ is designed as a serious game. Participants are asked to act as a space-mining crew, which has to collect minerals with a rover and rely on a camera-drone for reconnaissance, while keeping the rover out of harm and managing limited resources. In this paper we provide an account of how we designed Orbitia’s pedagogical structuring by relying on the Johnsons’ cooperative learning approach whose fundamental concept is “positive interdependence”. More particularly, we show how we worked on resource, role and task interdependence to design three collaboration-inducing ‘flagship’ devices: the rover-steering-device (RSD), the item-locating-device (ILD) and the responsibility-activating-device (RAD).