Effects of Mobility on Group Collaboration

This is a great paper comparing a paper-based collaborative math skills activity with the same activity implemented on mobile devices. The participants were first grade children in Chile. They used expert heuristic evaluations to examine both teaching methods and then ran a comparative study to determine which method worked better.

This comment about the design's affect on social interactions is intriguing.
"Handhelds regulated social interactions because children needed to read information off of their Handhelds in order to tell their number to the other children. The handhelds mediate the collaborative work and act as a referee to regulate behavior, leaving the children to interact socially, make decisions, and negotiate their differences of opinion." In other words, the program sets the rules and restricts behavior of the individual users for the benefit of the group goal (completion of the exercise). If this can be applied successfully to children it can be applied to adults.

Encouraging Face-to-Face Collaborative Learning through the Use of Handheld Computers in the Classroom, 2003
Gustavo Zurita, Miguel Nussbaum, and Mike Shaples

Unfortunately I haven't been able to get a pre-print for this paper either on the web or from the authors. So you will probably have to have a Springer subscription through a university to access this paper. If anyone finds a publicly accessible version, please mail me.
[full-text pdf or html]