Pro-active Meeting Assistants : Attention Please!

This paper gives an overview of pro-active meeting assistants, what they are and when they can be useful. We explain how to develop such assistants with respect to requirement definitions and elaborate on a set of Wizard of Oz experiments, aiming to find out in which form a meeting assistant should operate to be accepted by participants and whether the meeting effectiveness and efficiency can be improved by an assistant at all

Pro-active Meeting Assistants: Attention Please!

This paper gives an overview of pro-active meeting assistants, what they are and when they can be useful. We explain how to develop such assistants with respect to requirement definitions and elaborate on a set of Wizard of Oz experiments, aiming to find out in which form a meeting assistant should operate to be accepted by participants and whether the meeting effectiveness and efficiency can be improved by an assistant at all. This paper gives an overview of pro-active meeting assistants, what they are and when they can be useful. We explain how to develop such assistants with respect to requirement definitions and elaborate on a set of Wizard of Oz experiments, aiming to find out in which form a meeting assistant should operate to be accepted by participants and whether the meeting effectiveness and efficiency can be improved by an assistant at all

Developing communicative competence in global virtual teams: A multiliteracies approach to telecollaboration for students of business and economics

Telecollaboration is a learning scenario in which groups of foreign language learners communicate with geographically distant partner classes via the internet. Besides its principle focus on developing linguistic and intercultural competence, telecollaboration provides opportunities for rehearsing multiple literacy practices. These include media and academic literacy as well as the collaborative and critical thinking skills that are needed for academic and professional contexts alike. Drawing on studies of online intercultural exchange from the fields of Foreign Language Education and Business and Economics, this paper discusses the similarities and differences in approach to online exchange between the two disciplines and then shows how this informed the design of a multiliteracies model for telecollaboration projects that is tailored to the specific needs of students of Business and Economics

Sounds Like a Misnomer? On the Role of Formal and Informal Leaders in Self-Managing Virtual Teams

Self-managing virtual teams are increasingly becoming common in the workplace. While the name self-managing virtual teams, by definition seem to suggest teams without any formal leaders, this is not the case. While some of the self-managing virtual teams have no leaders, many others may have internal or external formal leaders. However, most of the self-managing team research focuses on the leadership that is provided to these teams by external formal leaders. With this research-in-progress study, we aim at explicating the role of all leaders, formal or informal, external or internal. Our research questions are: (1) Which behaviors do individuals manifest to emerge as informal leaders in self-managing virtual teams? 2) In what capacity do formal and informal leaders contribute to goal accomplishment in self-managing virtual teams? We conduct this research through semi-structured qualitative interviews of key informants from self-managing virtual teams. Despite its abundance, traditional leadership research cannot be claimed to transfer directly to the leadership context of self-managing virtual teams. Unique conditions of these novel team environments require focused studies of leadership in virtual team settings. Thus, it is important to combine an inductive grounded theory approach with a deductive literature based approach. This combination allows for confirming which of the self-managing team leadership behaviors already exist in the literature, and identifying the leadership behaviors that do not apply to the SMV team setting, and eliciting behaviors that are only uniquely seen as leadership within the SMV team context. To this end, in this study, we use the research from traditional organizational leadership literature, self-managing team leadership literature and virtual team leadership literature as a way to categorize leader behaviors that are extracted from data based on inductive coding of the interviews. This paper presents the overall study, its motivations, a brief overview of relevant literature and the research methods. The results and the discussion will be provided during the conference

Leadership in a Non-Traditional Setting: Self-Managing Virtual IS Development Teams

Despite its abundance, traditional leadership research cannot be claimed to transfer directly to the leadership context of self-managing virtual (SMV) Information Systems Development teams. Unique conditions of these novel team environments require focused studies of leadership in virtual team settings. Although there are some studies of virtual team leadership that make important contributions to the literature, these studies typically use short term, ad-hoc teams of students. This study ultimately aims at filling the gap in the literature by investigating how leadership manifests in real-life SMV IS teams over time. In this paper, the overall study is introduced and the initial findings based on the content analysis schema development effort are reported

Emergent Leadership in Self-managed Virtual Teams: A Replication

Carte, Chidambaram, and Becker (2006) conducted a longitudinal study of 22 self-managed virtual teams to better understand the differences in leadership behaviors engaged in by high- versus low-performing teams. We conducted a methodological replication of their study to attempt to confirm its findings. Our data were collected in a different country (Sri Lanka versus US), using different subjects (MBA versus undergraduate students) grouped into 25 teams that were collocated (rather than geographically distributed) but still using a collaborative technology (CT), and engaged in different a task (judgement versus intellective) than the original study. These changes result in opportunities to determine the robustness of previous findings. Two of five hypotheses results were replicated, indicating that certain characteristics of high-performing technology-supported teams seem universal. However, the remaining differences between the studies point to the influence of task, culture, and geographic dispersion of members in determining effective leadership behaviors in self-managed computer-supported teams

Multidisciplinary Knowledge sharing Approach in the Control of Zoonotic diseases in Nigeria: Motivations and Hindrances

This study explores factors that motivate and also factors that hinder knowledge sharing among public health professionals in managing zoonotic diseases in Plateau State, Nigeria. A qualitative method using a case study research design was used for the study. Data were collected through a semi-structured interview and focus group discussion. The analysis was done using qualitative content analysis. Findings revealed that; Forum to share knowledge, Adequate funding, Professional ethics, Policy, and Organizational support constitutes major motivating factors for multidisciplinary knowledge sharing; while Professional dichotomy, Negative traits, Monodisciplinary training, Lack of policy, Lack of funds, and Leadership Issues are major hindrances to multidisciplinary knowledge sharing in managing zoonotic infections in Plateau State, Nigeria.The approach to multidisciplinary knowledge sharing will be positive when factors that motivate public health professionals are adequately in place; these will result in a robust investigation of potential zoonotic diseases in Plateau State, Nigeria. However, factors that constitute hindrances are major setbacks in managing zoonotic diseases which must be addressed in order to harness the full potentials of the various public health professional working in Plateau State, Nigeria for the benefit of all. Keywords: Multidisciplinary knowledge sharing, Public Health professionals, Zoonotic Infection

The Impact of Virtuality and Shared Leadership on Virtual Team Performance

Previous studies show divergent views of shared leadership in the team performance of virtual teams. In this study, we seek to understand the mediating and moderating roles of trust, commitment, and virtuality among virtual team members on performance within the context of shared leadership. We conducted a questionnaire-based survey to gather perspectives on shared leadership and performance and analysed responses through structural equation modelling. We find that there is a significant positive effect between the two and that virtuality plays a significant moderating role for virtual team performance. In addition, we find that when virtuality increases, the mediating effect of trust and commitment is not significant, which challenges previous findings

Online distributed leadership: A content analysis of interaction and teacher reflections on computer-supported learning

This study performs a content analysis of the communication that develops in online educational situations. It focuses on two aspects of communication in a context in which we observe instructional leadership: how leadership is seen in the virtual classroom and how teachers view their role. The study attempts to answer the question of how teachers lead this methodological change, that is, instructional leadership at the service of distributed leadership. The study analyses the online interaction and teachers’ reflections on the communication between teachers and students in the process of virtual teaching, specifically in post compulsory secondary education in Spain.Study financed by an R&D project in the area of Education Sciences Management entitled ‘Learning-Focused Leadership and its Impact on Improvement: Practices and Results in Secondary Education’, under the Subprogram for basic, non-oriented research projects. National Plan for R&D, 2010 Competition