A virtual team is a team that works across space, time and organizational boundaries with links strengthened by webs of communication technologies [10]. Members of a virtual team may be geographically separated, may be in different time zones, may come from different cultures, and may have occasional face-to-face interactions. Computer-mediated communication such as electronic mail (email), Internet Relay Chat (IRC), web conferencing, and groupware tools are the primary means of communication.
The virtual teams under study in this research are engaged in a software development project. They are temporary teams that exist for a set period of time, have a specific task to do, have not worked together as a team before and are not likely to work together again. Members come from different cultures and are in two different time zones. There are sub-groups that meet locally face-to-face but the entire team never meets face-to-face.
The SCANS report, issued in 1992 by the US Department of Labor described five specific competencies required of the work force in the 21st century. The ability to work in teams, as well as the ability to work well with people of culturally diverse backgrounds, were cited as specific abilities in the interpersonal skills area [3].
Colleges and universities have responded to this report and others by integrating collaborative problem solving throughout the curriculum [4]. There have been efforts to make team projects model “real world” experiences [1] and to form partnerships with industry to give students needed group work experience [15].
Virtual team learning [7] that takes place within the distance-learning environment goes further in educating students for work in the 21st century. Students can be attending the same university from different geographical locations or be involved in multi-university projects [5, 7, 8, 9, 13, 16]. Students work with students from different cultures, in different time zones, in different countries to achieve a common goal or accomplish a specific task.
While there is a substantial body of work on group work that takes place in the traditional classroom environment, there is relatively little previous research in the use of virtual teams in computer science courses [2, 5, 6, 9, 11, 14].
Goals of the Research
The primary objective of this research is to understand more clearly the group development process in virtual teams. Specific research questions are:
· Do group development models developed and validated with face-to-face groups require modification when applied to virtual teams?
· How important is conflict in the performance of virtual teams, that is, do certain types of conflict in a team result in a more productive team and a better product?
To explore these questions, I am studying the group dynamics and performance of virtual teams composed of students from two universities that are engaged in a software development project. The teams are temporary, composed of members located in different countries, exist for a set period of time, and communicate primarily through Internet Relay Chat (IRC) and email.
As part of this research, I am studying the performance of virtual teams composed of students from Grand Valley State University and Uppsala University, Sweden, a collaboration known as Runestone. The primary aim of the Runestone project is to introduce real international experience into undergraduate Computer Science education in a way that has value for all participants. A research goal for Runestone is to identify effective support structures for remote international collaboration, encompassing strategies for communication, project management, and technology use [5].
Runestone is a 3-year project. A pilot project involving one team of eight students (4 GVSU and 4 Uppsala students) was conducted in 19998. A full implementation of the project in 1999 involved 42 students. Seven teams of six students (3 students from each institution) worked on a software development project. The Runestone 2000 project involved 93 students in 16 teams.
Data collection included a background questionnaire, project logs, journals, IRC logs, and archives of all e-mail correspondence. The questionnaire, project log, and journal questions are accessible from the class web page, http://www.csis.gvsu.edu/class/brio.
A preliminary analysis of both the 1999 and 2000 journals, email, and IRC logs indicates that students engaged in virtual teamwork encountered problems similar to those reported for face-to-face student teams [12]. Students cited poor communication, lack of member participation, poor leadership, lack of technical skills, procrastination, and lack of motivation as team-related problems. Some of these problems, such as poor communication, were magnified because of the computer-mediated communication (email, IRC).
In the next phase of my research, I will explore the preliminary finding that most teams did very little storming, that is, their interactions were polite and non-confrontational. In the Runestone 1999 implementation, the two teams whose email and IRC logs showed some healthy conflict with both their local and remote teammates were the teams rated as producing the best projects by the course instructors.
In June 2000, I completed the requirements to transfer from Mphil status to PhD status and my research proposal was approved. My research design methodology follows the grounded theory approach. Currently, I am analyzing the Runestone 2000 data. Some of the preliminary findings from the Runestone 2000 data analysis are detailed in a paper recently submitted to the ITiCSE 2001 conference. I hope to complete my PhD by December 2001.
I attended the Doctoral Consortium in 1998, 1999, and 2000. I have enjoyed them all! Feedback from the discussion leaders and the other participants helped me to identify flaws in my research methodology and to focus on areas that needed further exploration. I came back from each consortium with a renewed purpose and a better sense of what I needed to accomplish. I hope to gain the same benefits from attending the Doctoral Consortium in 2001. I want to be challenged, and to share and learn from all participants.
Each year, we are asked to line up in order of completion. Over the past three years, I’ve slowly moved up the line. Hopefully, this will be my last Doctoral Consortium as a student – but not as a participant. The Doctoral Consortium is an invaluable part of the SIGCSE conference.
1. Arras, R. J. and Motter, L. The Senior Seminar in Computer Science. Proceedings of the SIGCSE 90 Technical Symposium, February 1990. Also in SIGCSE Bulletin 22, 1, pp. 29-36, February 1990.
2. Clear, T. (1999). A Collaborative Learning Trial between New Zealand and Sweden - Using Lotus Notes Domino in Teaching the Concepts of Human Computer Interaction. SIGCSE Bulletin, 31(3), 111-114.
3. Cohen, E. and Boyd, B. Teaching Techniques That Work: College Teaching of Information Systems. 1996. Available from http://www.acm.org/~Eli_Cohen/active.html.
4. Daigle, R. J. and Doran, M. V. Integrating Collaborative Problem Solving Throughout the Curriculum. Proceedings of the SIGCSE 96 Technical Symposium, February 1996. Also in SIGCSE Bulletin 28, 1, pp. 237-241, March 1996.
5. Daniels, Mats et al. RUNESTONE, an International Student Collaboration Project. In Proceedings of IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference. Tempe, AZ, November 1998.
6. Jarvinen, K., Kyaruzi, J., & Sutinen, E. (1999). Between Tanzania and Finland:Learning Java Over the Web. SIGCSE Bulletin, 31(1), 217-221.
7. Knoll, Kathleen and Jarvenpaa, Sirkka. Learning to Work in Distributed Global Teams. August 3, 1995. Available from http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~bgac313/hicss.html.
8. Knoll, Kathleen and Jarvenpaa, Sirkka. Learning to Work in Distributed Global Teams. January 10, 1998. Available from http://www.bus.utexas.edu/~jarvenpaa/gvt/gvt98/hicss.html.
9. Last, M., Almstrum, V., Daniels, M., Erickson, C., & Klein, B. (2000). An International Student/Faculty Collaboration:The Runestone Project. SIGCSE Bulletin 32(3), September 2000, pp 128-131..
10. Lipnack, J., & Stamps, J. (1997). Virtual Teams: Reaching Across Space, Time, and Organizations with Technology. New York, NY: John Wiley and Sons, Inc.
11. Macek, T., Mannova, B., Kolar, J., & Williams, B. (1999). Global Cooperation Project in Computer Programming Course. SIGCSE Bulletin, 39(1), 208-211.
12. Pournaghshband, Hassan. The Students’ Problems in Courses with Team Projects. Proceedings of the SIGCSE 90 Technical Symposium, February 1990. Also in SIGCSE Bulletin 22, 1, pp. 44-47, February 1990.
13. Spargo, Lois and Barbara Kelsey. How Two Universities Crossed the Border. January 12, 1999. Available from http://www.uni-freiburg.de/inet96/c8/c8_1.htm
14. Swigger, K., Brazile, R., & Shin, D. (1995, 1995). Teaching Computer Science Students How to Work Together. Available: http://www-cscl95.indiana.edu/cscl95/swigger.html [June 24, 1998].
15. Williams, Kathleen. Educating the Next Generation of Information Specialists: Industry and University Collaborative Learning Pilot Project. Proceedings of the SIGCSE 97 Technical Symposium, February 1997. Also in SIGCSE Bulletin 29, 1, pp. 350-354, March 1997.
16. Yoo, Youngjin. An Investigation of Group Development Process in "Virtual" Project Team Environments. This research in progress report was available from http://www.bus.utexas.edu/~jarvenpaa/yoo.html, November 19, 1996.