RETROSPECTIVE ANALYSIS OF COMMUNICATION EVENTS- Understanding the Dynamics of Collaborative Multi-Party Discourse.

This research is aimed at understanding the dynamics of collaborative multi-party discourse across multiple communication modalities. Before we can truly make significant strides in devising collaborative communication systems, there is a need to understand how typical users utilize computationally supported communications mechanisms such as email, instant messaging, video conferencing, chat rooms, etc., both singularly and in conjunction with traditional means of communication such as face-to-face meetings, telephone calls and postal mail. Attempting to understand an individual’s communications profile with access to only a single modality is challenging at best and often futile. Here, we discuss the development of RACE – Retrospective Analysis of Communications Events – a test-bed prototype to investigate issues relating to multi-modal multi-party discourse. We also examine future avenues of research for further enhancing our prototype and investigating this area.