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Evaluating Anchored Discussion to Foster Creativity in Online Collaboration

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Collaboration and Technology (CRIWG 2015)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 9334))

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Abstract

Open innovation and crowdsourcing ideas rely on people to be creative through an online collaboration system. Creativity in online groups depends heavily on the interaction between group members. Anchored discussion was evaluated in a preliminary laboratory experiment as a new mode for creative interaction. In anchored discussion every comment is tied to some aspect of the idea. This first exploration generated novel insights for additional and refined research. Results indicate that anchored discussion leads to a more structured discussion amongst group members. For the same level of creativity, groups using anchored discussion needed less interaction and less discussion than the control groups. In a post session survey, participants made several suggestions on how to improve anchored discussion. We conclude that anchored discussion is promising as a new tool to aid online groups in creative collaboration.

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Acknowledgements

Funding for the first author’s contributions was provided through a scholarship from the Hanns-Seidel-Foundation as part of its efforts to support highly talented students with financial support from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).

Funding for the third author’s contribution to this research was provided by the National Science Foundation Grant #1322285.

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Correspondence to Dominik Siemon .

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Link, G.J., Siemon, D., de Vreede, GJ., Robra-Bissantz, S. (2015). Evaluating Anchored Discussion to Foster Creativity in Online Collaboration. In: Baloian, N., Zorian, Y., Taslakian, P., Shoukouryan, S. (eds) Collaboration and Technology. CRIWG 2015. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9334. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-22747-4_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-22747-4_3

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