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In this study, a Surface Computer Supported Cooperative Work paradigm is proposed. Recently, multitouch technology has become widely available for human-computer interaction. We found it has great potential to facilitate more awareness of human-to-human interaction than personal computers (PCs) in colocated collaborative work. However, other studies and modern operating systems have rarely been concerned with colocated interactions in their user interface (UI) design. Therefore, one UI framework, which we have named Surface Application Framework (SAF), is proposed to support multitouch and multiuser applications on tabletop computers. To explore the effects of wide area SAFs on colocated collaboration, one application, capable of making English sentences, was developed based on an SAF. This application was used to conduct a user-centric study to investigate differences between surface computers and PCs. The results show that a surface computer performs better than a PC in creating awareness during collaborative work, but it requires more time due to its poor performance with drag-and-drop operations. Finally, this study summarizes a three-dimensional design approach to consider various trade-offs between awareness and manipulative performances. Additionally, some mechanisms are suggested to be employed to overcome the weakness of drag-and-drop operations with multitouch interfaces in a future study. (Contains 6 figures and 6 tables.)

In this paper, the development of an innovative Virtual Manipulatives and Whiteboard (VMW) system is described. The VMW system allowed users to manipulate virtual objects in 3D space and find clues to solve geometry problems. To assist with multi-representation transformation, translucent multimedia whiteboards were used to provide a virtual 3D space in which users could express their mathematic solutions and reasoning with a three dimensional model which can be viewed from any perspective. The purpose the VMW is to promote a multi-representative construction model with which users can easily organize their thinking manually and symbolically to solve geometry problems, based on the pedagogical theory which states: "Children would construct their geometry concepts from multiple representations like mapping the concrete items to abstract ideas through physical or mental manipulation". The proposed system was evaluated with one pilot study to investigate its perceived ease of use and usefulness. Furthermore, students' solving strategies were analyzed using their manipulations in the 3D space and solutions recorded in the whiteboards. The results showed that the proposed system was perceived as useful, and helped students to understand the processes of geometry problem solving, such as using various solving strategies, as well as exposing geometrical misconceptions. In the future, researchers also aim to apply the multi-representative construction model to knowledge construction in other domains. (Contains 10 figures and 8 tables.)