Do Some Things Change Faster than Others? The Dynamics of Behavioral Change in Computer-Supported Groups

We would expect that as participants in group activities interact and gain experience with each other and computer support technologies, their perceptions toward social processes and media properties are likely to change. What we don't know is whether these perceptions evolve similarly or differently. This paper examines a large number of computer-supported work groups from two different studies, working over a series of sessions on a collaborative writing task. Results indicate that perceptions about social issues tend to exhibit different timing and rates of change than perceptions about media-related issues. Specifically behavioral perceptions begin to change before media perceptions, and they also exhibit more change overall than media ones. Moreover, perceptions about media with different attributes change differently relative to social perceptions.