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 need for team projects in computer science education has been documented in government reports [4], curriculum guidelines [1], and published articles [8]. Computer Science departments in colleges and universities have responded to these pleas by integrating collaborative problem solving and teamwork throughout the curriculum [5]. There also has been an effort to make team projects in software engineering courses model “real world” experiences and to form partnerships with industry to give students needed group work experience [15].
Virtual team learning 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 [3, 6, 9, 11, 12, 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 education [3, 6, 9, 11, 12, 13, 16].
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, Michigan, USA 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 [6].
Originally, the Runestone Project was a three-year project (1998 through 2000) sponsored by the Swedish Council for Renewal of Undergraduate Education. Because of the positive benefits to both students and teachers, the Runestone project continues, without outside funding, as a joint collaboration of Uppsala and GVSU. Since 1998, Runestone has involved over 225 students in collaborative software engineering.
Data collection includes a background questionnaire, project logs, journals, IRC logs, and archives of all e-mail correspondence.
When grouped for the purpose of working together in a traditional face-to-face environment, people go through a predictable series of development phases during the project’s lifecycle. For example, the Tuckman model [14] identifies five stages of group development: forming, storming, norming, performing, and adjourning. In the Runestone project, I have the opportunity to see how teams develop and work through these stages. Some teams have gone through the entire development cycle while others have gone through only some of the cycle. For the latter teams, the causes have centered on team disagreements, misunderstandings, and poor communication. These preliminary findings are consistent with a study done by Spargo and Kelsey [12] that showed some distributed student teams either bypass the storming stage or have that stage occur out of the normal sequence.
Currently, I am using a grounded theory approach to analyze the Runestone data. The grounded theory approach “involves deriving constructs and laws directly from the immediate data that one has collected rather than from prior research and theory” [7]. I have completed open coding of the 1999 IRC logs and am starting to refine these codes.
Recently, I created and distributed a web-based survey to uncover current practices in designing and teaching virtual team project courses in computer science education. The data was used in a paper that has been submitted to the ITiCSE 2002 conference. A summary of the survey results can be found at http://acad.stedwards.edu/~last/virtual_team_results.htm. Another paper submitted to the ITiCSE 2002 conference traces the evolution of the Runestone project and discusses lessons learned from this international collaboration.
I attended the Doctoral Consortium in 1998, 1999, 2000 and 2001. I have enjoyed them all! Feedback from the discussion leaders and the other participants help me to identify problems in research methodology, ambiguous concepts, and potential pitfalls. I come back from each consortium with a renewed purpose and a better sense of what I need to accomplish. I hope to gain the same benefits from attending the Doctoral Consortium in 2002. I want to be challenged, and to share and learn from all participants.
I am (hopefully) nearing the end of my quest for a PhD. The Doctoral Consortium offers me the opportunity to receive the constructive criticism and the needed encouragement to keep me working towards my goal.
1. ACM Computing Curicula 2001 (Steelman Draft) Available: http://www.acm.org/sigcse/cc2001/steelman/ [October 31, 2001].
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3. Clear, T., “A Collaborative Learning Trial between New Zealand and Sweden - Using Lotus Notes Domino in Teaching the Concepts of Human Computer Interaction”, SIGCSE Bulletin, Vol 31, No 3, Sept. 1999, pp. 111-114.
4. Cohen, E. and Boyd, B. Teaching Techniques That Work: College Teaching of Information Systems. 1996. Online. Internet. Available WWW: http://www.acm.org/~Eli_Cohen/active.html
5. Daigle, R. J. and Doran, M. V., “Integrating Collaborative Problem Solving Throughout the Curriculum”, SIGCSE Bulletin Vol 28 No 1, Mar. 1996, pp. 237-241.
6. Daniels, M., Petre, M., Almstrum, V., Asplund, L., Bjorkman, C., Erickson, C., Klein, B., Last, M., “RUNESTONE, an International Student Collaboration Project”, Proceedings of 1998 Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE '98), Tempe, AZ, November 4–7, 1998.
7. Gall, M. D., Borg, W. R., & Gall, J. P., Education Research: An Introduction (Sixth ed.), Longman Publishers, White Plains, NY, 1996.
8. Gotterbarn, D., Riser, R., “Real-world Software Engineering: A Spiral Approach to a Project-Oriented Course”, Proceedings of the 7th IEEE Conference on Software Engineering Education and Training (CSEET1994).
9. Last, M., Almstrum, V., Daniels, M., Erickson, C., & Klein, B. An International Student/Faculty Collaboration:The Runestone Project. SIGCSE Bulletin Vol 32, No 3, Sept. 2000, pp 128-131.
10. Lipnack, J., & Stamps, J., Virtual Teams: Reaching Across Space, Time, and Organizations with Technology, John Wiley and Sons, Inc., New York, NY, 1997.
11. Macek, T., Mannova, B., Kolar, J., & Williams, B., “Global Cooperation Project in Computer Programming Course”, SIGCSE Bulletin, Vol 39, No 1, Mar. 1999, pp. 208-211.
12. Spargo, Lois and Barbara Kelsey. “How Two Universities Crossed the Border.” Online. Internet. [January 12, 1999]. Available WWW: http://www.uni-freiburg.de/inet96/c8/c8_1.htm
13. Swigger, K., Brazile, R., & Shin, D. “Teaching Computer Science Students How to Work Together.” Online. Internet. [June 24, 1998]. Available WWW: http://www-cscl95.indiana.edu/cscl95/swigger.html
14. Tuckman, B., “Developmental Sequence in Small Groups”, Psychological Bulletin, Vol 63, 1965, pp. 384-399.
15. Williams, Kathleen, “Educating the Next Generation of Information Specialists: Industry and University Collaborative Learning Pilot Project”, SIGCSE Bulletin, Vol 29, No 1, Mar. 1997, pp. 350-354.
16. Yoo, Youngjin. “An Investigation of Group Development Process in "Virtual" Project Team Environments.” Online. Internet. [November 19, 1996]. Available WWW: http://www.bus.utexas.edu/~jarvenpaa/yoo.html,.