Cognitive Model of Team Collaboration: Macro-Cognitive Focus

摘要

The purpose of this paper is to describe a cognitive model of team collaboration emphasizing the human decision-making processes used during team collaboration. The descriptive model includes the domain characteristics, collaboration stages, meta- and macro-cognitive processes, and the mechanisms for achieving the stages and cognitive processes. To gain an understanding of the team collaboration process, the model will focus on three tasks: (1) team decision-making/course of action (COA) selection, (2) developing shared understanding, and (3) intelligence analysis (team data processing). During team collaboration there are various collaborative situation parameters that influence collaboration performance. Time pressure, information and knowledge uncertainty, large amounts of information, and dynamic information were chosen as critical parameters to focus the collaboration domain because of their significance to current military requirements. The final factor considered is team types, the most complex factor influencing collaboration performance. The seven team type characteristics (asynchronous, distributed, cultural diversity, heterogeneous knowledge, unique roles, rotating teams, and hierarchical vs. flat command structure) were selected based on the common characteristics of today's military collaborative teams. Two experiments were designed to provide empirical data on the validity of the collaboration stages and cognitive processes of the model. Both face-to-face teams and asynchronous, distributed teams achieved the same high-quality solution in the same amount of time, but the asynchronous, distributed teams required less communication. With respect to the collaboration stages, both face-to-face and asynchronous distributed teams demonstrated behavior that supports the existence of Knowledge Construction, Team Collaborative Problem Solving, and Team Consensus stages during collaborative problem solving.