Remotely Shaping the View in Surgical Telementoring

Distributed collaboration on physical tasks is a social process that involves all actors iteratively proposing, assessing and modifying the view of a shared workspace. In this paper, we describe the ways in which a view of a shared workspace is shaped by a remote expert to weave their expertise into the accomplishment of a complex physical task during surgical telementoring. We focus on the communicative functions of talk and actions used by the remote experts and local workers and identify strategies the experts employ to remotely shape the view. This analysis reveals the possibility for collaborative shaping of a view in surgical telementoring as well as other mechanism for a remote expert to craft and present a view of the shared workspace.