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Student teamwork: developing virtual support for team projects

In the 21st century team working increasingly requires online cooperative skills as well as more traditional skills associated with face to face team working. Virtual team working differs from face to face team working in a number of respects, such as interpreting the alternatives to visual cues, adapting to synchronous communication, developing trust and cohesion and cultural interpretations. However, co-located student teams working within higher education can only simulate team working as it might be experienced in organisations today. For example, students can learn from their mistakes in a non-threatening environment, colleagues tend to be established friends and assessing teamwork encourages behaviour such as “free-riding”. Using a prototyping approach, which involves students and tutors, a system has been designed to support learners engaged in team working. This system helps students to achieve to their full potential and appreciate issues surrounding virtual teamwork. The Guardian Agent system enables teams to allocate project tasks and agree ground rules for the team according to individuals’ preferences. Results from four cycles of its use are presented, together with modifications arising from iterations of testing. The results show that students find the system useful in preparing for team working, and have encouraged further development of the system

Reviews

Francis Botto, Dictionary of Multimedia and Internet Applications ‐ A Guide for Developers and Users, Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, 1999. ISBN: 0–471–986240. Hardback, x+362 pages, £34.95

Achieving Virtual Teamwork Using Software Agents

In this paper a software agent system is described to help give online support to students who are taking part in team projects. A prototype agent system has been designed to help with allocating tasks to students in the team and to assist agreement on ground rules for working together. After two iterations of implementing this agent system with student teams, the findings from student feedback is given, with suggestions for enhancing the functions of the agent system in future prototypes

Examining the affordance of a software tool to support students in team project work

This paper presents the findings from a case study to investigate how undergraduate students used the output from a teamwork support tool. In designing this sort of software tool usability is considered, but analysis of the findings from this research suggests that the affordance of any support tools should also be considered, because without adequate signposting, the perceived affordance may not be the same as the intended affordance, as anticipated by the designer. This leaves the students unclear what the action possibilities of the software are, and how best to use the functions provided.Case study was chosen as an interpretive research method, because it would provide rich data to demonstrate the variety of possible uses for the support tool. The tool under consideration in this study was designed to help the student team to allocate tasks to team members, according to ability and preference. The research was carried out with undergraduate students undertaking team projects in the information systems discipline. A grid based on the work of Sadler and Given (2007) was used to analyse the students' feedback on the system, according to whether the action possibilities intended by the designer were perceived or not.This research showed that the students used the output from the tool in a variety of different ways, depending upon their perceptions of the affordance of the system. The perceived affordance of the system depended upon the efficacy of the signposting of the affordance, and the individual students' previous experience of team working. In this case the sharing of knowledge was hampered by a lack of signposts to the action possibilities of the tool. Student team project working is an unstructured network of individual learners, so each student may exercise their discretion in using support tools, sometimes even disregarding a tool. Although the findings from this case study are from co-located students, these students use online tools to maintain communication with each other when not on campus in the same way that online student teams do. So the results suggest that this tool, and others similar to it, may be equally suitable for supporting online student team working, provided the affordance of the tool is signposted with suggestions for action possibilities

Task Allocation In Team Projects: Findings from an Experimental Online System to Support Students

As more business organisations use global teams for solving problems or systems development, it becomes important for students to have experience of tools to support global team working and develop team skills for global as well as face to face team working. In Higher Education the team project is one of the best ways to develop a number of skills, including team working and use of CMC tools. In addition, students are learning about team working at the same time as learning about the subject matter. There is a move from face to face tuition at universities towards online provision, and many students are working from home whenever possible. Any support provided for student team working needs to be flexible, to enable students to work at convenient times and places, and should promote understanding of issues of team working, both on campus, in the workplace and globally. Many researchers have identified maintenance roles and task roles, as interrelated roles necessary to achieve successful team working. Groupware was originally designed for dispersed teams of workers, rather than students, to support the task oriented roles of team working, and offers limited support for the maintenance roles, which tend to be problematical both for learners on campus and staff in the workplace. Also groupware may not provide adequate support to help students to recognise the issues relating to team working. Previous work suggested that one difficulty the student teams experience is deciding who should do which part of the project. Thus a software support system was designed and implemented to automate the process of allocating the project tasks to individual team members, in order to study the effect of this function upon the maintenance and task roles of team working. The resulting system works by asking each team member to select from a list of team tasks those tasks they are able to do and those they like doing. The system uses reasoning to suggest which team members could be allocated to carry out which tasks, and whether any training in specific tasks is indicated by low skill levels. The team can use these suggestions as a basis for negotiation of the final allocation of the tasks of the project to individuals. Teams of 10 to 15 undergraduate students, carrying out systems development projects, as part of business information systems and information technology programmes of study, took part in trials over three successive years of study, following an action research approach to the investigation. Questionnaires, interviews and focus groups were used to gain feedback from the student users of the system. The software system did help the team leaders to allocate tasks, taking into consideration individual team members' preferences. The output from the system was used as the basis for discussion between the members, and was thought to be very useful when the team leaders did not know their team members from previous work. The knowledge base resulting from the system was useful to highlight skill shortages, requiring some training, and enable team members to be paired off to complete tasks. The teams could also mitigate project risk, by ensuring the most appropriate member was responsible for key tasks. Students felt more confident that other team members were capable of successfully performing allocated tasks, indicating some degree of trust emanating from the system outputs, even though the system relied upon individuals to provide honest input. A reluctance to try something new was noted from some students in the study, although they acknowledged the importance of team projects in providing opportunities to try out and learn new skills. Suggestions for improvements to the system ranged from linking the system to project planning tools, to providing information and guidance on what is required to carry out the different project tasks

Investigation into the Roles of Agents in Supporting Students Working on Group Projects Online

Group projects give students an opportunity to discuss their understanding of the subject with their peers, as they apply the theory to practice. We should try to incorporate an element of groupwork in online learning and teaching provision, but it is difficult to simulate some of the processes of groupwork online. In this paper we present initial work on developing a software agent which can help in supporting students working online on group projects. This agent is to be incorporated into a learning environment being used to support the OTIS learning and teaching provision. The implementation is described together with its potential for enhancing the support given to online learners

Are We Ready to Go Live with Our Team Projects?

Project work forms a large part in work undertaken by graduates when they enter the workforce, so projects are used in higher education to prepare students for their working lives and to enable students to apply creativity in their studies as they present a solution to a problem, using technical skills they have learned in different units of study. Projects, both at work and in higher education, may be completed in teams, thus providing experience and the opportunity to develop team working skills. The team projects presented in this paper have been provided by external organisations, so that students work in a team on a real life problem, but with the support of their tutors, in the university setting. In this way the projects more closely resemble the sorts of problems they might encounter in the workplace, giving an experience that cannot be gained by working on tutor devised problems, because the teams have to communicate with an external client to analyse and solve an authentic problem. Over the three years that the Live Projects have been running, feedback indicates that the students gain employability skills from the projects, and the organisations involved develop links with the university and benefit from output from the projects. A number of suggestions for improving the administration of the Live Projects were suggested, such as providing clients with information on timescales and providing students with more guidance on managing the projects. </jats:p

Software Agent Systems for Supporting Student Team Project Working

This chapter describes the trial of an experimental software agent system, designed to help students to get started on their team projects, by allocating tasks to individuals and agree on ground rules for the team. Students taking Information Technology degree programmes tried the system over several years, providing feedback on the suitability of this sort of system for supporting the process aspects of team project working. Findings from this research showed that students used the output from the system in different ways according to their previous experience and suggested additional features that students would like to see in a system for supporting their team working, which could be incorporated into future development of the system.</jats:p