Towards a framework for collaborative information exchange: Exploring effects of time pressure and task difficulty on group cognition behaviors and implications for computer supported collaboration in healthcare.

摘要

In this information age, computerization in the healthcare workplace aims to improve quality of care, reduce administrative and clinical costs, and enhance healthcare work processes. However, integration in this environment proves challenging. Computerizing healthcare processes is not merely a technological pursuit but relies on human-driven coordination of highly fluid, uncertain, and exception-filled activities and processes spanning social, technological, and political boundaries.;This dissertation aims to increase our understanding of the "information arena" framework in the context of shared and personal information spaces in team collaboration through a mixed qualitative-quantitative approach. A "stage support" model for classifying, measuring, and analyzing information exchange contexts in shared "frontstage" and personal "backstage" workspaces emerges. An experimental method that integrates qualitative classification of group information exchanges with quantitative task-timing of a collaborative folding task is proposed, and the effects of task difficulty and time pressure on information exchange behaviors are explored.;Findings reveal measurable effects on information seeking behaviors in the shared and personal workspaces. The data suggest that amount and frequency of frontstage activity are sensitive to time pressure and task difficulty under certain situations. Time pressure and task difficulty are also shown to influence group information exchange behaviors. Time pressure increases goals planning, synchronized folding, and instruction confirmation activity, while high task difficulty decreases individual activity and increases group confusion and uncertainty but also encourages more instruction and demonstration. Significant within-information exchange mode effects are also uncovered. While stage support measurements yield interesting quantitative insights and reaffirm some findings of past studies, task specific findings are not readily generalized to all collaboration information exchange settings and demands continued research.;This dissertation demonstrates the viability of a robust, novel methodology for data collection and analysis to quantify group processes in collaboration tasks and successfully employs pre-specification of task quality to minimize confounding process performance effects such as variable outcome quality. It also highlights the enormous potential for information, workspace, and collaboration research and design approaches to improve provider-provider and patient-provider interactions in healthcare settings and other collaborative, information rich settings where rapid and fluid information exchange is held under high safety and performance demands.