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Exploring Engagement in Distributed Meetings during COVID-19 Lock-down

Authors:
Fahad Said
Klaudia Carcani

Keywords: CSCW; Digital Meeting Platforms; Distribued Cooperation Work; Distributed Meetings; Attention; COVID-19; HCI; Participation; Conversation roles.

Abstract:
Meetings are an important part of articulation work in cooperative groups. Thus, engagement in meetings influences cooperation. In the case of distributed cooperative meetings, engagement is influenced by the spatial distance among members. Building on the existing literature, we introduce a framework for analyzing engagement in distributed cooperative meetings and study the phenomenon specifically for the period of the nationwide lock-down due to COVID-19, where remote meetings were the only choice. We interviewed 11 professionals experiencing home office during lockdown, regarding their experience about engagement in distributed cooperative meetings, and conducted five participant observations in meetings with 8, 4,6, 4 and 13 participants as a direct investigation of engagement. Findings suggest that the use of social cues, meeting facilitator and personal interest are influential factors that regulate engagement in distributed meetings. The suggested framework has potential for detecting engagement, as we discuss the implications of our findings for digital meetings platforms. This paper contributes in the field of Computer supported cooperative work and Human Computer Interaction, with discussions and future research in how to detect, obtain and sustain engagement in the context of cooperative work

Pages: 104 to 112

Copyright: Copyright (c) IARIA, 2020

Publication date: March 22, 2020

Published in: conference

ISSN: 2308-4138

ISBN: 978-1-61208-761-0

Location: Valencia, Spain

Dates: from November 21, 2020 to November 25, 2020