The Effects of Group Collaboration on Presence in a Collaborative Virtual Environment

Abstract

Presence in Collaborative Virtual Environments (CVEs) can be classified into personal presence and co-presence. Personal presence is having a feeling of “being there” in the CVE yourself. Co-presence is having a feeling that one is in the same place as the other participants, and that one is collaborating with real people. In this paper we describe an experiment used to investigate the effects that small group collaboration and interaction have on personal presence and co-presence in a CVE. We hypothesise that collaboration and interaction enhances co-presence in a CVE. We found that there was a large difference in co-presence between two CVEs which produced different levels of collaboration and interaction. These two VEs were identical and only the task differed. This produced different levels of collaboration and interaction between the two VEs. Personal presence was measured subjectively, using a questionnaire developed by Slater et al. We have developed a co-presence questionnaire which assesses the levels of co-presence subjectively. A collaboration questionnaire has also been developed.