Do Fewer Laptops Make a Better Team?

Abstract

This study explores how the number of laptops within a team working around a table influences their collaborative processes. Complementary quantitative and qualitative analyses have been performed with eight groups of four participants who had to carry out a travel planning task with two, three or four laptops. The quantitative analysis of subjects' gaze locations for each dialogue utterance shows that laptop owners look at their display for 65% of coded events. This ratio is quite independent of the number of laptops in the group. Consequently, the higher the number of participants with laptops, the less attention is available for dealing with coordination. The qualitative analysis of the interaction between participants showed that if more laptops foster parallel individual searches, they are "cognitive attractors". Participants indeed have difficulty getting away from their laptops. More specifically, their verbal communication often takes place while keeping an eye on their screen, i.e., with only partial attention. The lack of full attention hampers the production of critical thinking about strategic issues, which appears detrimental not only for performance but also for learning. These findings seem to indicate that collaborative learning could be more effective with an asymmetrical layout, i.e. with fewer laptops than team members. This might scaffold the emergence of roles and foster social interaction: team members with no personal displays tend to regulate the activities of others or at least pay more attention to group interaction. Due to our qualitative methodology, we present these as provisional results.