Intelligent Electronic Facilitator: Increasing GDSS Effectiveness and Making Web-Based GDSS Possible

摘要

Facilitation is considered one of the most critical factors in the successful use of group decision supportsystems (GDSS). Human facilitation is constrained by cost, availability, and consistency. These constraintsare magnified when GDSS is implemented over the World Wide Web. In this paper, we explore the limitationsof reliance solely on the human facilitation and propose the intelligent electronic facilitator (IEF) forsupporting human facilitators. We hypothesize that a GDSS augmented with the IEF will improve the processand outcome of GDSS use. We develop an IEF prototype, and use it to test the validity of our hypothesis.