The impacts of Delphi communication structure on small and medium sized asynchronous groups: preliminary results

Communication structure is a way of improving the effectiveness of group communications by coordinating group members´ individual efforts. This study investigates the use of Delphi, a communication structure which has been widely used to collect ideas and opinions from geographically dispersed experts. A new approach in Delphi implementation using asynchronous computer-mediated communication (CMC) is developed. A 2X2 controlled experiment investigates the effect of Delphi structure on small-sized (5-6 members) and medium-sized (10-12 members) asynchronous CMC groups. The group task is to describe the potential applications and impacts of pervasive devices that can track the location of individuals. Preliminary results indicate that the Delphi structure does result in more unique ideas per person than the unstructured condition.