Optimizing Student Teamwork: Improving User Engagement and Collaborative Effectiveness

Abstract

With the growing importance of teamwork in higher education, effective communication and goal congruence have become vital in improving the effectiveness of student teamwork. This study aims todesign and implement an innovative system that combines a goal-setting chatbot and an effort visualizer to facilitate effective collaboration in student teams. We found that unclear goals and lack ofengagement were the main challenges in teamwork. To address these challenges, we developed asystem that combines a chatbot and an effort visualizer designed to enhance team transparency andgoal alignment through technology. The chatbot guides users to set specific collaborative goals throughthe SMART framework. At the same time, the effort visualizer displays each member’s contribution,thus increasing accountability among team members and facilitating greater participation. The systemwe designed was validated in a creative writing task (N=84) in a collaborative scenario. The resultsshowed that either the chatbot or the effort visualizer alone positively impacted student engagementand collaboration. However, when using the chatbot and effort visualizer in combination, there neededto be more clear evidence to improve engagement and collaboration effects further. This finding suggests that we pay more attention to the characteristics of individual tools and combination strategieswhen designing collaboration enhancement tools. This study provides valuable insights into using chatbots and visualization techniques to improve team collaboration and suggests new directions for futureresearch in educational technology.