Comment Distribution in Electronic Poolwriting and Gallery Writing Meetings

Two types of electronic brainwriting are used typically in Group Support Systems research: poolwriting and gallery writing. While a large number of academic studies have used the former technique, the latter is more efficient and effective, but has been used less frequently. This paper describes these two group idea generation techniques and discusses prior comparison studies. An experiment using the two brainwriting techniques shows that subjects were more satisfied with and preferred gallery writing. In addition, subjects using poolwriting were able to see only about 50% of the comments generated in the electronic meeting, while gallery writing subjects were able to view all comments. INTRODUCTION Much research has shown how groups in electronic meetings can participate more, save more time, and be more satisfied than groups in traditional, verbal meetings (McLeod, 1992). A major factor often not addressed in studies of Group Support Systems (GSS), however, is the nature of the technology used (Benbasat & Lim, 1993). A different electronic meeting technique or an improvement in the computer technology itself can change experimental results. For example, researchers found in a comparison of two GSS tools that subjects using one produced better quality solutions, but subjects using the other produced more unique alternatives (Easton, et al., 1990). Many studies of GSS have been based upon "electronic brainstorming" using electronic poolwriting (Pervan, 1998), and leading GSS researchers have published electronic poolwriting studies in highly-respected journals (e.g., Dennis, et al., 1999; Dennis & Valacich, 1993; Dennis, et al., 1997; Dennis, et al., 1996; Kahai, et al., 1998; Reinig, et al., 1998). Several million people in more than 1,500 organizations have used GSS in meetings throughout the world (Briggs, et al., 1998), and electronic poolwriting has been used in many of these meetings. However, a superior technique called electronic gallery