Let’s Study Together: Designing “Study-With-Me” System with the Concept of Social Translucence

Abstract

Background As social learning becomes difficult in physical spaces such as libraries, study with me (SWM) video has emerged in which people shoot and share themselves studying. Participating in realtime SWM sessions allows participants to experience social presence with others at a low cost and gains emotional support to support each other. However, in current platforms where SWM content is shared or SWM sessions are held, participants are reluctant to expose their information to an unwanted level. Methods We discovered the problems of the current systems for learning using SWM and explored alternative systems that maintain an appropriate level of private information exposure while sharing social presence. In particular, a method of abstracting the user's video based on the social translucency theory was proposed, and the effect was investigated. Results The user study confirmed that social translucence, which controls the balance between social presence and privacy exposure, could be effective in situations for long-term learning. Social translucence reduced concerns about excessive privacy exposure of participants, and had a positive effect on improving learning efficiency by providing other participants’ silhouettes. Conclusions We propose a social learning system that utilizes social translucence focusing on real-time SWM learning situations. Further research on how the level of translucence should be adjusted according to various learning situations and other techniques to control translucence needs to be conducted. However, the design considerations and findings of this study are expected to help research and to develop communication systems available not only for real-time online learning situations but also for work situations