'Callout Bubble Saved My Life': Workspace Awareness Support in BYOD Classrooms

Co-located students working in a bring-your-own-device (BYOD) classroom have limited awareness of their peers' work. We investigated the design of an awareness cue for students aged 6 to 17, in a large web-based canvas shared among tablets and laptops. By incorporating teacher and student feedback in an iterative design process, the project's goal was to support workspace awareness needs on touch devices, as well as to ensure age-appropriateness and technical feasibility. Specifically, we aimed to balance awareness, distraction, and clutter. We designed an awareness cue for students, a Callout Bubble, which is displayed near the object being manipulated by a peer, and fades away over time. A study of 71 students and 4 teachers revealed that, with our awareness cue design, students' awareness of their peers' actions in the shared canvas was significantly correlated with increased task focus and decreased frustration levels when peer conflicts arose. We also found that students understood the awareness information conveyed and were able to self-monitor and coordinate within the group.