This paper describes a series of studies conducted to evaluate methods of encouraging productive dialog between young children in 2D and 3D shared narrative workspaces. These workspaces were based on the Graphic Story Writer (GSW), an interactive system that produces coherent narrative text in response to user interactions. In particular, we examine the effect of introducing "positive interdependence" between collaborators as a way of encouraging productive dialog.Three studies of user interactions with the GSW were performed. An initial study of collaborative storytelling using a 2D version of the GSW demonstrated the technical feasibility of creating a shared 2D workspace devoted to narrative construction The study also confirmed the difficulty of encouraging communication between children during synchronous learning activities at separate computers. The second study introduced an additional condition that created positive interdependence between users. Users in this condition had significantlymore on-task communication than those in the other conditions. We go on to describe how we modified the 2D GSW model to support collaboration in a 3D shared workspace, and provide observations and insights gained from a usability study of the 3D GSW.
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