Abstract
An empirical study was completed to study the use of an asynchronous multimedia communication tool to support dialogs during a joint forces military exercise. Ten captains, majors and colonels from Canada, France, Germany, Israel and the US who participated in the joint forces exercise had the option of using this multimedia communication tool whenever they felt it would help them to communicate information to commanders in other units. Two of the messages consisted of one-way communications. The remaining 13 were asynchronous dialogs. In these messages, the officers:
Made extensive use of pointing, drawing and embedded written notes Used these asynchronous dialogs to detect and repair misconceptions that arose from live face-to-face briefings (6/13 dialogs) Used these asynchronous dialogs to share expertise while developing a plan (13/13 dialogs). On Likert scales (1=strongly disagree; 7=strongly agree), the ratings for usefulness and usability were 6.2 and 6.4, respectively.
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