The facilitators perspective on meetings and implications for group support systems design

Based on research into group process facilitation, a meeting model is proposed that defines the many activities comprising group work and highlights the critical facilitator actions. Facilitating group work is a dynamic process that involves managing relationships among people, tasks and technology, as well as structuring the interactions contributing to an effective meeting. By examining existing group support systems (GSS), it is shown that assistance for facilitation is low. With this information, methods are proposed to improve facilitation support (and therefore the meeting process) in GSS for face-to-face or dispersed environments.