73,076 research outputs found
DESIGN AND IMPACT OF AWARENESS FUNCTIONS - A STUDY ABOUT SOCIAL MEDIA IN VIRTUAL TEAMS
The usage of social media in leisure time settings has become a prominent research topic. However, less research has been done on the design of social media in collaboration settings. In this study, we investigate how social media can support asynchronous collaboration in virtual teams and specifically how they can increase activity awareness. On the basis of an open source social networking platform, we present two prototype designs: a standard platform with basic support for information processing, communication and process ? as suggested by Zigurs and Buckland (1998) ? and an advanced platform with additional support for activity awareness via special feed functions. We argue that the standard platform already conveys activity awareness to a certain extent, however, that this awareness can be increased even more by the feeds in the advanced platform. Both prototypes are tested in a field experiment and evaluated with respect to their impact on perceived activity awareness, coordination and satisfaction. We show that the advanced design increases coordination and satisfaction through increased perceived activity awareness
Necessary skills and practices required for effective participation in high bandwidth design team activities
Technology is continually changing, and evolving, throughout the entire construction
industry; and particularly in the design process. One of the principal manifestations of
this is a move away from team working in a shared work space to team working in a
virtual space, using increasingly sophisticated electronic media. Due to the significant
operating differences when working in shared and virtual spaces adjustments to
generic skills utilised by members is a necessity when moving between the two
conditions. This paper reports an aspect of a CRC-CI research project based on
research of ‘generic skills’ used by individuals and teams when engaging with high
bandwidth information and communication technologies (ICT). It aligns with the
project’s other two aspects of collaboration in virtual environments: ‘processes’ and
‘models’. The entire project focuses on the early stages of a project (i.e. design) in
which models for the project are being developed and revised. The paper
summarises the first stage of the research project which reviews literature to identify
factors of virtual teaming which may affect team member skills. It concludes that
design team participants require ‘appropriate skills’ to function efficiently and
effectively, and that the introduction of high band-width technologies reinforces the
need for skills mapping and measurement
Virtuality in human supervisory control: Assessing the effects of psychological and social remoteness
Virtuality would seem to offer certain advantages for human supervisory control. First, it could provide a physical analogue of the 'real world' environment. Second, it does not require control room engineers to be in the same place as each other. In order to investigate these issues, a low-fidelity simulation of an energy distribution network was developed. The main aims of the research were to assess some of the psychological concerns associated with virtual environments. First, it may result in the social isolation of the people, and it may have dramatic effects upon the nature of the work. Second, a direct physical correspondence with the 'real world' may not best support human supervisory control activities. Experimental teams were asked to control an energy distribution network. Measures of team performance, group identity and core job characteristics were taken. In general terms, the results showed that teams working in the same location performed better than team who were remote from one another
Semantic discovery and reuse of business process patterns
Patterns currently play an important role in modern information systems (IS) development and their use has mainly been restricted to the design and implementation phases of the development lifecycle. Given the increasing significance of business modelling in IS development, patterns have the potential of providing a viable solution for promoting reusability of recurrent generalized models in the very early stages of development. As a statement of research-in-progress this paper focuses on business process patterns and proposes an initial methodological framework for the discovery and reuse of business process patterns within the IS development lifecycle. The framework borrows ideas from the domain engineering literature and proposes the use of semantics to drive both the discovery of patterns as well as their reuse
Team work: A problem for Ergonomics?
This Article does not have an abstrac
E-Learning for Teachers and Trainers : Innovative Practices, Skills and Competences
Reproduction is authorised provided the source is acknowledged.Final Published versio
Cultural diversity and information and communication technology impacts on global virtual teams: An exploratory study.
Modern organizations face many significant challenges because of turbulent
environments and a competitive global economy. Among these challenges are the use
of information and communication technology (ICT), a multicultural workforce, and
organizational designs that involve global virtual teams. Ad hoc teams create both
opportunities and challenges for organizations and many organizations are trying to
understand how the virtual environment affects team effectiveness. Our exploratory
study focused on the effects of cultural diversity and ICT on team effectiveness.
Interviews with 41 team members from nine countries employed by a Fortune 500
corporation were analyzed. Results suggested that cultural diversity had a positive
influence on decision‐making and a negative influence on communication. ICT
mitigated the negative impact on intercultural communication and supported the
positive impact on decision making. Effective technologies for intercultural
communication included e‐mail, teleconferencing combined with e‐Meetings, and
team rooms. Cultural diversity influenced selection of the communication media
- …