Short Paper on
Team Projects in Online Education
By
Nandhini Padmanabhan
Introduction
Creating and effectively carrying out group activities and team projects online is one of the key advances in e-Learning programs. Using the internet and the technology advances to communicate online and to work in virtual teams is now a common aspect both in the education and in the corporate work scenario.
Below are excerpts from three interesting articles on creating, managing and evaluating virtual team projects in the online learning scenario.
Summary
Clark & Gibb (2006) define Virtual Teams as a team whose members use technology to varying degrees in working across location, temporal and relational boundaries to accomplish an interdependent task. While the major advantages of virtual teams include round the clock operations in a 24 by 7 mode the key drawbacks of virtual teams include delays in completing tasks due to communication issues. The lack of non-verbal and para-verbal cues is the main cause of deterioration of online teams. In order to better understand the ways of online virtual team dynamics, the author draws up the case-study of an online class. The understanding of virtual teams can be derived best from the academic arena. Virtual study teams have an important role in distant asynchronous education. The working of one such course which consists of many group activities can help understand the team dynamics in online study groups, and how they can be extrapolated to the corporate world.
Clark & Gibb (2006) set their case study in a second year management course which is 100% online. Many small team activities were designed as part of this course, ranging from a simple meet and greet activity, to writing a group summary report on their research findings at the end of the course. 60 students were enrolled for the course and they were split in groups of four randomly, prior to the start of the course. While most students stayed within a 100 kilometer radius of the university, four students stayed outside of this limit.
Clark & Gibb (2006) set the key learning objectives for each of the study groups. The first task given to the group was to get used to the classroom technologies. Separate folders were created to be used by the members of the group and a guided tour package was created by the university to help students get accustomed to the software, and get ready for the course. The meet and greet sessions were conducted mainly to introduce the members of the group. Personal messages were posted by the members and some information was shared on their work life, family life, interests and hobbies etc, to enable group members to get to know each other at a high level. After “breaking the ice”, the group members were asked to name their group. Team names were exchanged through discussion boards and agreed upon by other members. Establishing a virtual communication plan involved a lot of brainstorming to discuss how they could work best throughout the semester to achieve the tasks set forth for them. Once the members were had established a base comfort level, the major assignment of creating a preliminary operational plan had to be done. Teams had to come up with a plan that involved development process and also contingency planning, in case a fellow team member was not able to participate or there were problems with the software. The final and most important task was to create a summary report of their findings for each of the five tasks. All the members of the team had to unify and create this report with complete involvement.
Clark & Gibb (2006) bring out the advantaged of such an exercise in the cognitive, affective and learning outcomes department. Some of the key learnings for members of the team from this study exercise are – understanding the technology and becoming competent in eLearning software, knowledge in project planning and report writing, virtual team socialization, developing self confidence, developing electronic communication skills and virtual team decision making process.
Clark & Gibb (2006) bring out some of the key aspects in designing such successful virtual teams on the part of the instructors and course administrators. The welcome video which includes navigation through the class room software must be sent to students prior to the start of the first class. This will enable students to be ready right from the first class. Team selection must be random, and hence there will be diverse groups in terms of gender and ethnicity. Instructors should have continued communication with each group. Instructors should have access to the team folders on the course management system and should monitor the progress of the teams regularly. Enough time must be set before assignment submissions so that students have a good amount of communication opportunities with the rest of the team. Finally student feedback on their team work experience must be collected and studied in order to understand virtual team experiences. Some of the points that were closely monitored and corrected using the feedback are timing trade-offs, student performances, resistance to change, student motivation and electronic communication skills. The article re-iterates the importance of fundamental communication and strong organizational processes for virtual teams to succeed.
Johnson et al. (2002) closely studied the students enrolled in a HRD online program to study and understand the nature of virtual teams. The nature of work within organizations is slowly changing from individual-based to team-based responsibilities. Teams are now being trained to communicate and perform irrespective of location and time. Having said this, it is important for the eLearning space to demonstrate that effective study teams can be formed through online learning which reinstates the fact that location and time do not matter when it comes to online education. Anything that is possible in face-to-face traditional education is now possible through online education with the help of the technology advancements. The study was aimed at answering two main questions. How do virtual teams develop and determine their group processes? What processes and strategies do virtual learning teams use as they carry out their team tasks?
Johnson et al (2002) define various models used in virtual teams. Tuckman’s model highlights four sequential stages of forming, storming, norming and performing. Forming refers to a period where members determine their position within the group and form rules and processes by which the group will operate. Storming stage is where conflicts arise as team members resist and rebel against accomplishment of productive tasks. Norming is the stage where the group finally becomes cohesive, settle down to start working on the task at hand. Performing is the stage where the group shows proficiency in working together to achieve goals. Another model called the Punctuated Equilibrium Model suggests that group processes work primarily on the time-frame set for the projects. The start of a project consists of a brief timeline, where the members meet for the first time and get accustomed to one another. This is followed by a first long work period. Then at the midpoint there is another brief transition where goals, processes are re-examined. This is followed by another long work period where outcomes and end results become the focus. The final brief transition is when the group wraps up its tasks and adjourns. McGrath’s model was called the Time, Interaction and Performance (TIP) model suggests that the group development process is multi functional. The TIP model suggests that groups perform three distinct functions- production, well-being and member support. Group members constantly maneuver towards to one of four functional modes (a) inception (b) problem solving (c) conflict resolution and (d) execution.
Johnson et al. (2002) came up with a case-study based on a HRD online program at the University of Illinois. Thirty six students were enrolled and they were all geographically dispersed across 14 different states and two countries. The class was divided into 7 different teams with 5 or 6 members each. The groups were formed based on geographical location to reduce time-zone impact. One half of the assignments were to be completed in teams. The teams used email, a collaborative web forum, synchronous text chat, instant messaging technologies to communicate. WebBoard was used for students to raise questions, issues and comments to help students better understand the topic. As a part of this course, there was also a synchronous online classroom session to be attended once a week where students response to the facilitator’s questions and participated in class discussions.
Johnson et al (2002) state that there are several instruments to assess the functioning of virtual teams. They include the Virtual Team Survey where information is obtained on the team’s process, leadership individual satisfaction, and overall team performance. The Background Survey of Virtual Team Members was used to assess team member’s feelings about working in a virtual team, identification of the types of interaction etc. Follow up interviews were also scheduled to ensure consistency. Data using these surveys were collected at the end of 6 weeks of course work. Based on the findings it was found that the group processes best identified with the Tuckman’s sequential model. However due to time constraints there was almost no storming stage and teams had quickly moved on to the norming stage. In essence the teams clearly followed the three stages of forming, norming and performing. When occasional conflicts arose the teams would work towards resolving the conflict and then move back to the stage they were in.
Johnson et al (2002) summarized the results of the survey and it was found that the absence of non-verbal cues caused the most problems. Social interaction was difficult and the teams could never get too personal. Coordinating with each other’s schedules was also a major hurdle. Each team member assumed the role of leader for each assignment. The leader was in charge of compiling thoughts and work put together by the rest of the team. A written memo was circulated at the end of each meeting for the benefit of members who could not attend. Meetings were kept short. Team roles kept changing based on the nature of the assignment. People with stronger backgrounds in the tasks were more dominant and leadership roles emerged virtually. The team also felt that they did not miss the face to face interaction. In contrast, they actually focused on the advantages of meeting online in terms of flexibility and comfort. Resolving team conflicts was an issue for some of the teams. Most issues were a result of poor communication and conflicts were resolved offline in a one on one mode. The author stresses that it is important for facilitators and course administrators to work on the following features of creating virtual teams. (a) Selecting appropriate virtual team tasks. (b) Providing collaboration and team building training (c) Providing project timelines that matched the team development model. This paper demonstrates into how virtual teams evolve and function. While the results of this survey cannot form generalized conclusions, they do provide valuable insights into the working of virtual teams.
Smith (2003) state that virtual teams are becoming more and more commonplace in workplace and educational settings. Virtual teams are becoming an increasing feature in the online education setting and in the corporate scenario. The main advantage of working in a virtual team is that the best skill for the job can be used irrespective of time or location boundaries. Group activities are an important aspect of learning in general, and forming virtual teams makes group work possible in eLearning. Virtual teams provide opportunities for socialization and co-construction of knowledge. The main challenges faced by virtual team operations are the lack of trust and team cohesiveness. The author states that the best conditions for intellectual accomplishment are environments that are motivated by discovery, reciprocal feedback between mutually respected members of the group and the free exchange of ideas. Creating learning communities is the key to the success of eLearning programs. The main reasons why virtual teams fail to perform are because the learning environments are different. It is important for members of online teams to acknowledge and appreciate the differences and to accommodate the differences between face-to-face teams and virtual teams. Establishing trust is another key focus area especially in the initial stages of forming teams. Communication is another key obstacle in online teams. The absence of non-verbal cues can frequently lead to miscommunication or misunderstandings between team members.
Smith (2003) states that “Situated Cognition” is useful to help understand learning in virtual teams. This means that the team members bring in their own resources and thoughts into the group which can be used to collectively create new knowledge. The group thus develops into a cohesive community of people who learned together and created new forms of knowledge. This is the essence of learning communities. Collaborative Learning is another key aspect of being part of a virtual team. Collaborative learning can be best exposed through problem based learning instruction model. The instructor presents a real life problem to the students and the students form teams to discuss the problem and come up with solutions. The instructor acts as a facilitator and moves between groups. This is a very successful case in which collaborative results are obtained in virtual teams. Team members share their own experiences and together they try to come up with one solution. However the author cautions that collaborative learning models should be judiciously used and will not work in all group work scenarios. With the presence of highly confident motivated individuals it could result in deadlocks and deadlines may not be met. Collaborative learning should also use synchronous technologies for their discussions. Using asynchronous technologies like discussion boards could result in loss of data from one member to another or delayed readings of posts could result in a different solution.
Smith (2003) states that virtual teams work best in a hegemonic scenario, where all team members have similar learning experiences. Voices of gender, color and varied cultures should not have any impact on the interactions between the team members. This is a perfect scenario. However the author points out that social and cultural conflicts do arise in virtual teams, and effective conflict resolution processes should be put in place by the team members and the facilitators in order to improve the quality of learning through such group activities. Group Learning provides a social context where in adults can construct and reconstruct the meaning of their experiences through expression in a safe, collaborative and creative environment.
Critique
Clark & Gibb (2006) have made a significant link between virtual teams in the academic space and the corporate space. The study exercise that was under scrutiny in this article is simple and straight-forward and yet, hits the nail on the head. The first few tasks that need to be incorporated in a course design in order for teams to bond and establish a basic level of comfort are outlined in this article. I like the way the author has set up some ground rules for course facilitators and administrators to take care of before the start of the course for the virtual teams to carry out effectively without any bias. The author highlights an important challenge in creating successful virtual teams as time-delays. Miscommunication, lethargic act of students due to increased flexibility of the online courses are the main reasons why virtual teams fail to deliver on time.
However the main drawback in this article by Clark & Gibb (2006) is the mix of students under survey. Most of the students stay within reach of the campus. In order to harness the true power of virtual teams, students should be separated geographically, ethnically and by time zones. Time zone differences always add a new dimension to the already complex nature of virtual teams and is a challenge to be beat. The author only seems to have considered asynchronous discussion boards as the main means of communication among the members of the team. However the author should have dealt with a case-study involving other synchronous technologies like chat, video conferencing etc, and measured learning outcomes of teams using such technologies. This was a key piece missing in this article.
Johnson et al (2002) put together a very comprehensive article on the formation and evolution and performance of virtual teams in a real-life scenario. The authors conduct a very systematic research into online teams by first defining the various models and the result collection processes. The actual case study itself is done with a good mix of students in varied geographical locations. However the first issue I see with this article is the formation of the teams. Students in similar locations are teamed up. This kind of defeats the purpose of demonstrating the power of virtual teams. Virtual teams must be able to break the barriers of time-zone and location and we should be able to team up any group of individuals irrespective of where they are. This way of forming and selecting teams would have made the survey much more interesting. It was also interesting that the team deviated a little from the Tuckman’s model by not going through a structured storming phase. Instead conflicts arose and were settled then and there in every stage. This seems more close to real life as conflicts and member disagreements can pretty much occur anytime and need to be resolved immediately.
While the survey conducted by Johnson et al. (2002) provided very useful insights into various aspects of virtual teams like leadership, communication, conflict resolution etc, I believe that more conclusive outcomes needed to be measured to accurately measure the performance of the virtual teams. The end result of being in a virtual team was the assignments submitted. The quality of the assignment could have been an important measure of how well the teams worked together, and this could have been tied back to the survey. More generalized conclusions could have been drawn if actual performance was measured. I especially liked the authors’ final note to the facilitators on how to design and coordinate virtual team tasks. However this note could have been backed up with examples to illustrate key learnings from the surveys. If a lot of conflicts and miscommunication arise in a specific assignment among all teams, then there is a good chance that that assignment was not a good fit for a team based assignment. The authors could have elaborated on this. On the whole, the article is very comprehensive and is a good starting point for course administrators and designers to learn about the dynamics of virtual teams and how to best utilize the power of team work in online education.
Smith (2003) writes about some interesting aspects of virtual teams that are common to both the education setting and in the corporate work setting. The author comes up with some very interesting terms through the course of the article like Collaborative learning, Hegemonic learning, situated cognition etc. The article is very interesting and comes up with certain key advantages and challenges faced by virtual teams. The article rights puts forth the point that a lot of research on virtual teams focuses on the process and functioning of the teams itself rather than the knowledge outcomes of the individuals working in these teams. Group activities in learning are primarily to gain knowledge through interaction, sharing, discussion and communication. Unless the actual knowledge gains of such team projects are taken into account, the benefits of virtual teams and their advantages can never be fully brought to light. This point is clearly emphasized in this article. However the author only states this fact. He does not do any research of case-studies to prove this point. Most terms and concepts introduced by the author on virtual teams make interesting read, but the article is very theory-based. None of the outlined case studies have any conclusive results one way or another. I especially liked the author’s view of learning communities as sharing individual experiences to form new knowledge as a team. This article is a good starting point for readers new to the concept of virtual teams and their role in the education setting. However without actual case studies and numbers, the significant impact of virtual teams in eLearning cannot be concluded using this article.
Conclusion
Team Projects are an inherent part of the education system. Online education is no exception. However the challenges of forming virtual teams, working across location and time barriers, working with technology to communicate require a lot of research and understanding to best harness the power of team work in eLearning. While it is the student’s responsibility to create cohesive teams, form processes for the proper functioning of the teams, collaborate and cohesively work towards the goals set forth, it is also the responsibility of the facilitators and administrators to select group assignments that will best fit the online setting, mentor students on collaborative learning, facilitate and help resolve conflicts and provide tasks with realistic time lines, so that virtual teams can be a successful feature of online education.
Annotated Bibliography
Clark, D.N., & Gibb, J.L. (2006). Virtual team learning: an introductory study team exercise. Journal of Management Education, 30(6), 765-787.
In this articles first examine the basic nature of virtual teams in the online environment and how they differ from their face to face counterparts. While there is no significant research proving that face-to-face teams are more effective, there is also some known issues with virtual teams like communication issues and the ability to form social networks. A virtual team study exercise was conducted with 60 students from an online course. Study teams were formed and six tasks were presented to the teams. These tasks included (1) becoming familiar with the course software and navigation (2) Meeting and Greeting fellow members (3) Naming their virtual team (4) Establishing a virtual communication plan (5) Establishing a preliminary operational plan (6) Writing a summary report. The team dynamics was examined throughout the course of the six tasks presented. Learning outcomes from each of the six tasks were categories as cognitive learning, action learning and affective learning. Team spaces should be created in the CMS, software induction training should be done before the start of the course, team selection should be done with no bias, facilitators and instructors should regularly communicate with members of the teams, team activities should be designed and sufficient time should be provided for completion. The author concludes that right from pre-enrollment it is important to keep in mind that the course management software and the course itself needs to be designed to enable students to work and positively engage in team work.
Johnson, S.D., Suriya, C., Yoon, S.W., Berrett, J.V., & Fleur, J.L. (2002). Team development and group processes of virtual learning teams. Computers and Education, 39(4), 379-393.
In this article the authors put together a very comprehensive process towards selection, forming and functioning of successful virtual teams. The authors begin with an explanation of the different team models that exist and elicit a detailed explanation of each of the models and bring out their differences. The case study is an online HRD course offered by the University of Illinois. Two different types of surveys and personal interviews were used to obtain results of the performance of virtual teams from the student’s perspective. While the case study did not specifically aim at reflecting a specific model, the authors bring out the actual results of the case study and how it clearly follows the Tuckman’s sequential model which consists of four stages in the development of virtual teams – forming, storming, norming and performing. The author was clearly able to see from the results of the survey that conflicts arose in all stages and were resolved almost immediately through a set process. Hence storming stage was absent and the model was modified to having only three sequential stages of forming, norming and performing. The authors also put in a word to facilitators and course designers to design group activities that are appropriate and fit in the online setting and to be aware of timelines for group projects as overcoming initial barriers in communication itself could be time-consuming in virtual settings and that has to be taken into account.
Smith, R. (2003). Learning in virtual teams: A summary of current literature. Retrieved 11 March 2010
from https://www.msu.edu/~smithre9/Project12.htm
In this article, the author defines virtual teams as being applicable to both the education as well as corporate work setting. With the increasing number of distance learning programs and the evolution of large corporate organizations, the incidence of virtual learning teams is on the rise and it is all the more important to study and research the proper functioning of virtual teams and ways to overcome some challenges posed by team work in online education. While the main advantages of virtual teams is the coming together of highly skilled individuals irrespective of location or time barriers, the main disadvantages are communication issues and lack of trust. The main gain behind working in virtual teams is formation of learning communities to share pre-existing thoughts and beliefs and form richer newer knowledge as a team. The author also states that virtual teams gives rise to collaborative learning. This can be used especially in the problem solving instructional mode, where teams come together to solve real-life problems and each individual brings something to the table in order to come up with one wholistic solution. While the best case scenario would be to have hegemonic teams with similar backgrounds and learning experiences, it is important for virtual teams to rise above surface level differences and turn the spotlight on actual knowledge gain and learnings as a group.