Abstract
Although the topic of virtual teams has created interest within the academic and practitioner literature, there is a lack of research on how to teach or train individuals to be effective members of such teams. To address this gap, we developed a virtual team activity that we have been using in our undergraduate business courses for 6 years. The activity is designed such that teams with members from several geographically dispersed universities work together via technology to experience the inherent differences of working within virtual teams. Here, we highlight some of the key facets of the activity as well as modifications we have made to improve the learning experience. We also discuss the debriefing sessions that are provided to classes, several pedagogical issues, and some student feedback that we have received.
There are numerous organizational benefits to using team-based structures (Mathieu, Maynard, Rapp, & Gilson, 2008) and communication technology (e.g., Buchanan & Boddy, 1982; Seddon, Calvert, & Yang, 2010). Given this, many organizations now rely on virtual teams (VTs) to complete a number of tasks (Martins, Gilson, & Maynard, 2004). So, it is not surprising that researchers and practitioners are interested in the topic of VTs. However, there appears to be very little work on how to teach students to work in VTs. Given the likelihood that our undergraduate business students will someday work in VTs, and our pedagogical belief that we are responsible for preparing them to do so, we designed an experiential activity to provide them with an opportunity to learn some of the crucial skills needed to navigate the VT landscape.
The Need to Teach Students to Work in Virtual Teams
Recent VT literature reviews suggest that VTs play a critical role in today’s organizations (e.g., Martins et al., 2004; Mesmer-Magnus, DeChurch, Jimenez-Rodriguez, Wildman, & Shuffler, 2011). Many students will thus work at some stage in these types of teams. However, after reviewing the syllabi for several courses, which include a discussion of organizational teams, we realized that students are not being specifically prepared for this experience. As faculty members, we were concerned with this academic shortcoming. This is a problem however, that extends beyond academia. In fact, an article in the Financial Times (Ilett, 2006) concluded that organizations also are a contributing factor to this shortcoming because they teach employees how to “operate technology, but not how to use it” (p. 8).
Both introductory management and team courses spend a great deal of time teaching students about teams, but there is often not a specific focus on VTs. Currently, most course content revolves around how to lead a team and the impact of various team processes (i.e., member interactions, communication, and decision making) on team outcomes. Limited time, if any, is allocated to the topic of how working in VTs compares to working in a face-to-face (FtF) team. Accordingly, we have developed a VT experiential activity that involves undergraduate business students from several universities to help illustrate some of the similarities and differences that occur when team members never meet FtF and must rely solely on technology to communicate and complete a project.
The goal of this VT experiential activity is to demonstrate to students how working in VTs can (a) be similar to working in FtF teams, (b) have several advantages over FtF teams, and yet (c) present some unique challenges. Based on the results of student surveys completed prior to working on this activity, many of our students are uninformed about these issues given their lack of experience working in VTs. In fact, most students report that using technology to communicate is easy and that in the future, there will be little need for FtF communication. Students are also quick to point out that technology allows individuals to work on projects at times that are most convenient to their specific schedules and to seek assistance in real time rather than waiting for a predetermined meeting time. Students also report that they foresee few limitations to working in virtual teams. While for some students these sentiments remain true even after participating in the VT activity, for others their perceptions are changed significantly after having the opportunity to work with geographically dispersed team members.
Outside of the academic setting, organizations are increasing their reliance on information communication technologies (ICT) and at the same time facing communication problems within their VTs (e.g., Brett, Behfar, & Kern, 2006). These problems have proven costly, creating the need for consulting firms to lead executive-level seminars on how to best use technology for collaboration (Ilett, 2006). A survey conducted by Rosen, Furst, and Blackburn (2006) revealed that 70% of VT training participants rated the program they attended as “not at all effective” (p. 237). In particular, team processes and leadership skills were identified as not receiving enough consideration. In addition, training participants overwhelmingly reported that such training should occur prior to the creation of the teams and should be offered on an ongoing or as-needed basis (Rosen et al., 2006). Based on these results and our own experiences working in and researching VTs, the intent of our experiential activity is to provide our students an opportunity to develop an understanding of the importance of team processes (communication and information sharing in particular) and leadership within a VT setting by experiencing firsthand working in this setting.
Summary of Experiential Activity
The task used for this activity is called TINSEL TOWN (Devine, Habig, Martin, Bott, & Grayson, 2004), a simulation activity that is publically available to faculty. The activity is fully described and the information needed to conduct this activity is provided in Devine and colleagues’ (2004) original article. TINSEL TOWN was selected because as described by Devine and colleagues (2004) it is
a business simulation designed to be engaging, moderately complex, easy to administer, quickly and objectively scored and iterative in nature. Groups of four act as the top management team of a fictional move studio, with each member representing a different function within the company. The team’s collective task is to maximize the studio’s profit over three simulated years (i.e., decision periods) by choosing screenplays to produce and setting marketing levels for each film based on limited budgets. Each member has access to some common information provided to all members as well as some unique role-specific information. (p. 94)
This simulation is relatively complex, engaging, and considered fun by students. In addition, TINSEL TOWN is a hidden profile exercise in that each student is initially supplied with a unique piece of information that is necessary for the overall success of the team. The activity forces students to make a number of decisions and interpret the information provided. The data are not straightforward, so they usually require some discussion to be understood. Another reason that we selected TINSEL TOWN for this activity is that it produces objective outcomes. Having such outcomes allows for a more robust debriefing session, where profit numbers are discussed, along with how those numbers were obtained, and might be improved. For business school students, the link to objective outcomes and profitability helps ground the activity in ways that are clearly related to other parts of their curriculum. Lastly, TINSEL TOWN provides an opportunity for students to experience the common information and information dependence effects (e.g., Gigone & Hastie, 1997; Mesmer-Magnus & DeChurch, 2009). While there is shared information, each team member also has unique information. Thus it is up to the team to decide how and what information to share as well as what to communicate. This aspect of the TINSEL TOWN activity is important, given our interest in demonstrating to students the impact that interacting through ICT can have on team communication and information sharing processes.
In TINSEL TOWN, students are provided with information about 11 screenplays that a movie company (their team) is considering. Based on budgetary constraints, each team must decide which screenplays to actually produce. Pertinent information is distributed among the four members of the team (e.g., vice presidents of Marketing, Industry Research, Talent Appraisal, and Script Evaluation). For instance, the VP of Marketing has data on marketing costs and ticket prices, whereas the VP of Talent has information on the skills of the director and actors. All the information must be used by a team to determine which screenplays to produce and how much to invest in each project to obtain the best results. For a more detailed description of TINSEL TOWN see the article by Devine and colleagues (2004), which also contains copies of all the information that must be provided to team members and explains how objective performance scores are calculated.
Virtual Team Activity Logistics
Introduction and technology needs
Based on our experience with this activity over the past 6 years, a first step after deciding to move forward is to consult with appropriate university information technology (IT) personnel to ensure that the necessary infrastructure is in place. The key here is to ensure that the materials needed for the activity can be accessed by participants from the different universities who are participating and that students will be able to utilize the various ICTs provided as part of this activity (e.g., chat, e-mail, wikis, and document sharing). After this step is completed, the VT activity is introduced in all classes on roughly the same date. Faculty tell students that they are about to embark on a VT project with teammates from around the country (or globe). Students are told that they will be receiving an email with their password and login information, which they can use at a site where the team task will be described. All of this ensures that each student is given the same description of the activity, regardless of any differences in universities, courses, and faculty.
Getting started
The first e-mail that students receive informs them of their assigned role in TINSEL TOWN and provides them with login information. For consistency, all students from the same university are usually assigned the same role. For example, Connecticut students might all become the VP of Marketing, whereas all Colorado students become the VP of Talent. This also keeps students from exchanging any of the unique information with peers in their classes. Within this first e-mail, students are not provided any information about the overall assignment—this information is posted on the team’s web page.
After logging in to their team’s web page, students can post and share information with other members of their assigned group. This enables faculty to post information to student teams as needed, and provides faculty with a record of the conversation threads for each team. Team conversation threads are subsequently used for grading purposes (discussed below) and to provide real examples for discussion during the debriefing session. When students first log in to their team’s site, they have access to the final recommendation sheet that is used to record and submit the team’s decision regarding which screenplays to produce as well as a memo (general memo) that describes the overall team task and the activity instructions. Specifically, teams are told that their assignment is to decide how to allocate their budget by deciding which films to produce and how much money to allocate for the marketing of each film.
Lastly, the site also directs students to their team wiki where students can add comments and attach files. In communications with the students (via both in-class discussions of the activity and in the instructions on the team sites), we emphasize that for the instructors to assess participation, students need to communicate using this wiki and the discussion threads included on the team’s web page. Teams are given 2 weeks to complete the assignment. In an attempt to provide the teams with a realistic experience, about 1 week into the assignment an additional task is added to the team website. This is a creativity task where students are asked to describe a possible sequel for one of the films that their team has decided to produce. Unlike the main team task, which is quantitative and involves calculations based on the figures provided, teams are left to decide for themselves what sequel they would like to produce, the sequel’s plot, which director and actors should be involved, and the sequel’s name.
Student surveys
Before students are assigned to teams, a survey is distributed in class asking the students about a variety of constructs such as their prior team experiences (virtual and otherwise), their technology expertise, and their propensity to trust (e.g., Mayer & Davis, 1999). In addition, we ask students to complete dimensions of the Big 5 personality assessment (Goldberg, 1999) and a number of basic demographic questions (i.e., age, sex, undergraduate major). 1 This survey is not anonymous; students are told that this will allow us to match their initial survey results with a subsequent follow-up survey. However, students also are told that any data we collect will be kept confidential and will not affect their grades. One of the more interesting results from this survey is that students are fairly confident about their abilities to leverage web technologies. For example, in a recent semester, respondents scored 3.82 on a 5-point (1 to 5) Likert-type scale that assessed their self-perceived ability to complete tasks using various web technologies. However, 89% of students stated that they had never worked in a VT. Accordingly, while the students are confident regarding their ability to use technology, this confidence may not be fully justified within the context of VTs given their limited experience in such environments.
Following the submission of a team’s final recommendation, members are asked to complete a second survey with questions regarding the types of technology they used during the activity, their team’s processes (Mathieu & Marks, 2006), perceived team performance, as well as various affective reactions such as team viability (Barrick, Stewart, Neubert, & Mount, 1998) and team satisfaction (Gladstein, 1984). 1 The results of these surveys enable us to provide students with comparisons across all the teams involved in the activity. This data further enables the students to not merely learn from their own experience with the activity but also to learn from the other teams involved. We often include a discussion of the survey results as part of our debriefing at the conclusion of the activity.
Activity Debriefing
Much of the learning that takes place in this activity is emphasized during the debriefing session, where students share their experiences, discuss what they could have done differently, and link the VT experience back to course content. The debriefing session is thus a crucial learning component. We start the debriefing by showing students how all of the teams performed (in terms of their objective outcomes) and identifying what film the various teams selected for their sequel (creativity task). Afterwards, students are walked through the formulae used to calculate the objective results and the movies that would have produced the best results. During this discussion, it is demonstrated that each team possessed the information needed for arriving at these optimal results. To make the best decisions, each team member had to share his or her information and then the team had to integrate all of the information. For some students, this is the first time they realize that other team members had unique information. A discussion usually follows on how this could have been ascertained earlier and what students might do differently in a similar situation next time around.
The majority of the debriefing session focuses on how team dynamics can be applied to the activity and more specifically, to the broader VT context. For instance, exact quotes from the current teams are used as examples of communication, highlighting how team members introduced themselves. In particular, some team members are very task-focused right from the start: “I’m the VP of Script. What is everyone else, so we can get this going?” When other team members introduce themselves, they sometimes add things, such as “Oh and my name is ____, I was born and raised 30 miles from campus . . . umm I work at Subway.” In contrast, many teammates spend considerable time at the beginning trying to introduce themselves: “Just wanted to introduce myself. My name is ______ and I am from ____________.” “Hope everyone is doing well . . . Just wanted to say hello and I look forward to working with you,” or “Hi everyone!! My name is ____ and I’m excited to meet everyone and be the best team!☺ Good luck on your exam tomorrow!”
These sorts of examples allow the class to discuss how team members can familiarize themselves with one another even when they are geographically dispersed. This discussion often leads to a review of the impact that initial interactions can have on a team’s ability to coordinate activities, manage conflict, and make good decisions. Research shows that teams with at least one initial FtF meeting perform better than do teams that are always virtual (e.g., Kennedy, Vozdolska, & McComb, 2010). However, in many instances (like this activity), FtF interaction is not possible. This experience allows students to develop strategies for effectively handling such situations later in their careers. We ask students to think about what can help a team feel more like a unit (become more cohesive) even when its members never met?
This discussion often evokes suggestions from students that reflect the importance of initial communication among team members, communication that sets the stage for subsequent team interactions. Many students acknowledge that how they communicate, in terms of the words that they use and how those words are interpreted, can be especially important in VT settings. For example, many students use “shortcuts” on the computer that could be interpreted in unexpected ways. Students are asked to give examples of this problem from their VT activity. Similarly, each faculty member also collects quotes from the team discussions to demonstrate this problem. After this point has been made, we again ask students to discuss what they might do differently in similar situations in the future.
Another topic that often arises during the debriefing sessions is that students talk about the level of commitment they felt to their team and how they were (or were not) willing to carry the load for other members. Here, the extent to which team members felt that they knew other members played a role in their willingness to assist those members. These comments reinforce the importance of presence in VTs (e.g., Zigurs, 2002), namely, presence represents “the degree to which a medium facilitates awareness of the other person and interpersonal relationships during the interaction” (Fulk, Schmitz, & Steinfield, 1990, p. 118). Presence has been found to be particularly important for team processes and performance within VTs (e.g., Lowry, Zhang, Zhou, & Fu, 2010). Accordingly, we ask team members during the debriefing if they felt attached to one another and, if so, then what led to such feelings, and what impact those attachments might have had on the team’s overall performance?
The debriefing session also covers the planning strategies utilized, how conflict was handled, and the decisions surrounding the technologies that the team used. Here, we discuss the team’s decision-making process as well as the various types of leadership behaviors that team members exhibited. Most of the teams do not plan sufficiently. Instead, they jump right into the activity without discussing what they want to accomplish or how to accomplish it. When we see a team that has done a superior job of planning, within the debriefing session we describe the nature of that planning, analyze why that planning occurred, and speculate about how the planning might have influenced the team’s performance. Students are especially impressed by teams in which someone took the lead in proposing plans that included such elements as deliverables, role allocations, and expectations.
Similarly, handling conflict can often take up a great deal of time during the debriefing session because students are surprised by how easily conflict can escalate when ICT is used (e.g., Cheshin, Rafaeli, & Bos, 2011). Consider, for example, the following comments made by students during the exercise: “It was nice of you to finally get online. When did you get this assignment?” or “I got this on Tuesday and was told to get on here immediately. What were you told?” “We have been doing this assignment without you” or “What’s going on here . . . What do we want to do? I’m just going to put my scores if we don’t come up with something cus [sic] its [sic] due soon!!!!!!!!!!!!” to “since our group didn’t communicate very well, the decision was due 30 min ago, I did some number crunching and came up with my own decision.” We provide these examples to students to demonstrate how communication can change within VTs and how messages can be read out of context and adversely impact the dynamics of the team as a result. In terms of structuring the debriefing session, we have found that providing students the opportunity to discuss their own experiences and then following this with examples from the activity works best. This format allows students to link their experiences to course material. Finally, we typically close with a discussion of students’ suggestions for ways in which the activity could be adjusted to strengthen the learning experience. Based on these comments and our own assessment of the activity, over the years we have altered the activity in various ways to enhance the students’ learning experience.
Activity Refinements
Team composition
The first semester we utilized this activity, we only had two universities participating and we designed three-person teams with two team members from one university and one team member came from a second university located in a different state and time zone. This setup was certainly in keeping with the reality that students might later experience when working in VTs (see Polzer, Crisp, Jarvenpaa, & Kim, 2006). However, an unexpected by-product of this setup was that students from the same school tended to meet in person even though this was discouraged. As a result, the two individuals often “overpowered” the single, geographically dispersed team member, causing that student to feel marginalized and frustrated with the activity. In the debriefing session, suggestions for handling this problem were discussed. However, in subsequent semesters, we have tried to avoid having members of a team from the same university.
In addition, in an attempt to make the activity more realistic, international students have often been added to the teams. Based on existing faculty relationships with colleagues from Japan, England, Italy, and Sweden, we identified individuals who were teaching comparable undergraduate business courses and asked whether they would be interested in participating in the activity. When teaching schedules and content have aligned, most faculty members we have asked have been favorably predisposed to having their students participate in this activity. However, different teaching schedules (i.e., semesters vs. quarters) and academic calendars can make the inclusion of international universities in this activity challenging. We have found that providing this international exposure makes the activity more logistically difficult, but it has also been extremely valuable and should prove especially beneficial to students whose jobs later require them to work with geographically and culturally diverse teams. Specifically, working with international team members forces students to plan meeting times based on an array of time zones and holidays. In addition, students have to handle language barriers and technological usage norms that can vary between countries.
Research suggests that team size can alter team functioning in both FtF and virtual contexts (e.g., Lowry, Roberts, Romano, Cheney, & Hightower, 2006). Since the first semester, we have always created four-person teams, because this size is appropriate for the TINSEL TOWN task. When international collaborations have not been possible, we have sought U.S.-based colleagues from different time zones. Again, securing different universities has been accomplished by leveraging the authors’ professional relationships. Basically we have asked our friends, coauthors, and former doctoral students if they are teaching a course where such an activity would be beneficial.
Activity description in syllabus
One of the first modifications we made to the activity was to add a thorough description of the activity to our syllabus. Recent work by Kidder and Bowes-Sperry (2012) shows that managing student expectations is important for classroom team projects. When the VT activity was not on the syllabus, students sometimes made negative comments about it during the debriefing sessions as well as on end-of-semester course evaluations. In part, these reactions could have been because they did not have the opportunity to plan for this extra assignment or because they did not like the element of surprise, which would be in line with the theoretical arguments regarding dissonance reduction (e.g., McKimmie, Terry, & Hogg, 2009). With the inclusion of this activity on the syllabus, such negative reactions have markedly declined. In addition, because the activity requires a fair amount of work and we want it to be taken seriously; having the activity on the syllabus legitimizes the learning experience that it provides.
Percentage of grade
Originally, the VT activity was ungraded. As with any team activity, there is always the potential for social loafing (e.g., Hoigaard, Safvenbom, & Tonnessen, 2006) because certain people believe that their contribution cannot be identified and so they contribute less. Research suggests that this problem may be even more serious when team members are geographically dispersed (e.g., Martins et al., 2004). Unfortunately, when our activity was ungraded, several groups had members who never logged in to the computer and thus did not participate at all. In response to these incidents, we made a couple of changes. First, a few days after the activity is introduced, each faculty asks their students how the activity is going. Typically, at this point some students express frustration that “those kids from XYZ university” have not yet bothered to log in. The professor then points out that some people from the students’ own class have not yet logged in either. There is always surprise about this, which often results in a good discussion about attributions and the dangers of assigning blame to others whom we cannot see or do not know.
More importantly, the activity is now a graded assignment, one that accounts for 15% of a student’s grade. Because the activity is now included on the syllabus and is graded, there has been a marked decrease in social loafing. However, when social loafing does occur, it provides an opportunity for a valuable discussion of techniques for handling the problem. Students are asked how team members can be motivated in VT settings, and how these practices might be similar and different from techniques that may prove effective within FtF settings.
Peer evaluations
As mentioned earlier, student feedback has suggested that in several teams, there was a student who was not pulling his or her weight. While this was certainly a frustration for their teammates, students became even more concerned about their teammates’ involvement once the activity became a graded assignment. Certainly, having each student participate is beneficial for the team’s overall performance given that each member has access to unique information that is needed to make effective team decisions. However, another student’s level of participation does not impact their teammate’s grade for this assignment given that the grading is based on the level of participation of each student based on a review of the team’s communication transcripts. As such, it is interesting that students became increasingly concerned about their teammate’s participation levels even though it had no bearing on their individual grades. To try and allay these concerns, we recently added peer evaluations to the activity.
To handle student grade concerns and instill in students the importance of evaluating the work of others, we decided to make two modifications to the activity. First, we increased the percentage of each student’s grade that was attributable to this activity to 15%. The first 10% was calculated based on the level of participation exhibited by each student, as assessed by the faculty. To that, an additional 5% of each student’s grade would be based on peer evaluation scores. Students were told about this upfront and it is listed on the syllabus and the peer evaluation form is provided to all students in advance of the activity so that they are aware of how they will be assessed by others.
Logistically, blank peer evaluation forms are posted to each team’s web page and students are asked to e-mail a completed form to their professor. Last semester peer evaluation scores ranged from 30 to 100 with an average of 89.5%. In the debriefing session, students are asked to reflect on how they assigned the peer evaluation scores, whether this was something they discussed with other team members, how surprised they were by the scores they received, and how managers ought to handle such evaluations in real work teams. This discussion can be tied into a broader discussion of 360o feedback and its importance in the workplace. More importantly, students are asked to discuss their perceptions of how this technique works when team members never physically met. From a leadership perspective, where fairness and impartiality are paramount, students often recognize that they are more likely to “slam” people on the VT project, but would not do this for FtF teams. The learning point here is to be aware that when team members are more distant, it is easier to give harsh evaluations. Thus a manager must consider ways to avoid this problem in VTs.
In addition to ensuring that students truly participate in this activity, these adaptations also have had a side benefit of increasing the overall level of communication within the VTs. This is important because it is only via ICT communication that students learn about VT processes and leadership. In fact, during the early administrations of this activity, the average number of communication exchanges among team members was fewer than 20 per team. More recently, after making the changes described here, the level of participation has increased significantly. In fact, in the most recent running of this activity, the number of comments posted by each student ranged from zero to 50, with an average of 12. As a result, teams now communicate 53 times on average, which represents a 165% increase from the communication levels we initially observed.
Creativity outcomes
Given that VTs often perform well on less structured tasks (e.g., Nemiro, 2002), during the last three administrations of this activity, we have added a creativity task. Specifically, each team is asked to pick one of the films that it decided to produce and then describe what a sequel to that movie might look like, in terms of its plot and characters. During the class debriefing session, we spend time discussing how decisions on this more open-ended task were made. Many students claim that this was the most difficult part of the activity.
New communication channels
The final refinement that we have made is to increase the range of ICTs that students may use to communicate. We only used Blackboard at first because it provided several benefits for the administration of this activity, namely, ease of set up and the ability to keep a record of team interactions. However, only having one communication option is unrealistic. Accordingly, in more recent administrations of this activity we have added chat, e-mail, wikis, and document sharing (i.e., sharepoint). We ask that students conduct all of their conversations using the media options that we provide, so that we can keep track of their communication for grading and learning purposes. In the debriefing session, we talk about the different ICT options and how they differ with regard to media richness (e.g., Daft & Lengel, 1986). Students explain why they chose one option over another and the impact that the media richness of their chosen options might have had on the dynamics and performance of their team. Interestingly, in discussions about media richness (e.g., Daft & Lengel, 1986) prior to this activity, students often question the concept of media richness. However, when students are forced to work virtually, we often hear such comments like “I think it will be easier if we just talk on the phone about our group decision,” or “Do you think it would be easier to maybe call each other? I think it may be a lot faster. Let me know.” Again, discussing these and other quotes during the debriefing session is useful because it prompts students to analyze how and when to use different types of ICT, and how such technology might affect the dynamics and performance of VTs.
Finally, asking students to only communicate using the communication technology that we provide is starting to become difficult. Students now want to set up things like GroupMe and Skype chats, which are easily accessible and provide advantages over the media options provided. In fact, last semester a team did use a different media and then uploaded a transcript of its discussion to the team’s wiki site so that participation grades could be determined. This sort of behavior creates a dilemma for us because we have to weigh the relative importance of mimicking real-world VTs against the desire to quantify each student’s participation in the activity. We will certainly have to consider this issue more fully as we move forward.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The work was partially supported by a grant from the Connecticut Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation (CCEI).
This article is published as a part of special issue: Teaching People About Groups
