0229590_C6FC0_solomon_negash_michael_e_whitman_amy_b_woszczynski_handbook

Section III

Interaction and Collaboration

Chapter VIII

Collaborative Technology:

Improving Team Cooperation and Awareness in Distance Learning for IT Education

Levent Yilmaz

Auburn University, USA

abstRact

This chapter presents a set of requirements for next generation groupware systems to improve team cooperation and awareness in distance learning settings. The premise of the chapter is based on the observation that in distance learning online asynchronous (e.g., e-mail, conference tools) or synchronous (e.g., chat) mechanisms are used to facilitate collaboration and coordination to complete necessary tasks. However, students are neither trained in basic principles regarding how effective cooperation takes place, nor means for their realization. Basic methods of cooperation are delineated along with a set of requirementsbasedonacriticalanalysisoftheelementsofcooperationandteamawareness.Themeans for realizing these elements are also discussed to present strategies to develop the proposed elements. Two scenarios are examined to demonstrate the utility of collaboration to provide deep integration of communication and task accomplishment within a unified coherent framework.

intRoduction

Information technology (IT) organizations increasingly rely on teams to address a variety of complex and challenging tasks (Salas & Fiore, 2004). Large complex software intensive system design, development, and management require considerable effort in collaboration and coordination among peers. Hence, teams have become an integral and essential component in every IT

organization(Yilmaz&Phillips,2006).Organizations believe that teams, effective teamwork, and engineers with proper skills to function in IT team projects can provide a competitive edge (Ellis, Gibbs, & Rein, 1991). Providing IT students the necessary educational tools and their principled use have the potential to improve the students’ cooperationandcognitionskills,whicharecritical for students to succeed in today’s global economy

(Carmel,1999).Awarenessofthistrendinfluenced

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instructors to incorporate group projects and research assignments into curriculum.

Indistancelearning,teamprojectsareassigned to a group of students who are geographically dispersed. Hence, online asynchronous (e.g., e- mail, conference tools) or synchronous (e.g., chat) mechanisms are used to facilitate collaboration and coordination to complete necessary tasks. However, students are neither trained in basic principles regarding how effective cooperation takes place, nor means for their realization. Furthermore, existing educational collaborative technologies (i.e., groupware) provide a classical organizational view of communication and lack implicitcoordinationfacilitiesthatsupportshared mental model construction (team cognition). Awareness of other group members is a critical building block in the construction of team cognition, and consequently computational support for awareness in collaborative education tools is crucial for supporting team cognition (Endsley, 1995) in distributed student groups.

This chapter presents a framework and a strategy to help mitigate these shortcomings in existing distance learning groupware for IT education. First, the characteristics of team work in distance learning are elaborated to set the stage for discussing requirements for next generation collaborative education tools. Specifically, we compare how such teams are different than conventionalteamsinITeducation.Thesignificance of team cognition inconjunction with cooperation is emphasized in the distance learning context. Then, we discuss why cooperation in distance learning is difficult to do right. In particular, the problems that pull apart a student team in a virtual education environment are highlighted. In particular, dispersion, breakdown of traditional coordinationandcontrolmechanisms,teamcohesion, and the substance (richness) of communication are presented as challenges (Carmel, 1999). A number of mitigation strategies, one of which is advanced collaborative instruction technologies, are proposed to counter the challenges. The

Collaborative Technology

chapter will then focus on a proposed framework for advancing the state of the art in collaborative instruction technology. The framework is based on fundamental methods of cooperation. The methods and underlying principles are then used to propose strategies to augment additional collaborativetechnologiestoimproveteamcognition and cooperation skills of students. We will consider both generic collaborative technologies (e.g., e-mail, audio-conferencing, video-confer- encing, and groupware platforms) and collaborative technology to support task specific solution for IT education.

backgRound

Project awareness (Gutwin & Greenberg, 2004) is something people take for granted in everyday world. This is mainly due the fact that acquiring such awareness information is natural and simple; as such, it is rarely considered as an intentional activity. As a consequence, it is often overlooked inthedesignofeducationaltoolsandcollaboration support frameworks such as groupware systems. The problem is that maintaining that awareness has proved difficult in current distributed educational groupware systems in which interaction mechanisms are poor and information resources are not designed to promote awareness.

group Project awareness

There are three main reasons why most educational groupware does not support project awareness. First, the input and output mechanisms are not capable of handling perceptual information available to face-to-face settings. Second, the amountofinformationgeneratedbyauserismuch less in a virtual setting than a physical workspace. Third, the education groupware systems do not present even the limited awareness information to the user.

Collaborative Technology

Table 1. Traditional vs. virtual teams

	Traditional Student Teams	in Distance Education
	Colocated members	Distributed members
	Face-to-face interaction	Electronic communication
	Mostly informal communication	Continuous structured communication
	Information distribution	Information access (pull)
	Sharing completed work	Continuous sharing of incomplete
		work
	Transparent process	Computer-visible process
	Culture learned through osmosis	Culture learned through electronic
		communication and produced artifacts

Awareness is often defined as the knowledge created through the interaction of an agent (i.e., user) with its environment (Endsley, 1995). The fourbasiccharacteristicsofawareness,definedby

Adams, Tenney, and Pew (1995), Endsley (1995), and Norman (1993), are as follows:

•Awareness is the knowledge of the state of the environment.

•Since the state of the environment changes over time, awareness must be kept up to date.

•Awarenessismaintainedbyinteractingwith the environment.

•Awareness is not the purpose; rather it is a means to achieve the purpose (e.g., the task at hand).

Several types of awareness have been investigated in the literature. Conversational awareness (Clark, 1996), casual awareness of others in work groups (Borning & Travers, 1991), and situational awareness (McNeese, Salas, & Endsley, 2001) are among the major types reported in the literature. Situation assessment and situation awarenessstudiesincognitivepsychologyprovide a wealth of information and results that can be leveraged to improve the state of the technology in educational groupware. Workspace awareness involves perception and understanding of others’ interaction with the shared project workspace.

Hence, workspace should focus on understanding of people in the project workspace, as opposed to workspace itself. Furthermore, workspaceawareness is based on the observations of the events within the workspace. The physical structure of the workspace and the nature of the artifacts influence team cognition and provide a baseline for the external representation of the team’s joint activity and its external memory. However, a number of characteristics pertaining to distance learning in IT education complicates gathering information that is necessary to construct workspace awareness.

challenges and issues in distance learning for it education

Virtual student groups in distance education are viewed by many as being team-based because activities are necessarily defined by the project and associated tasks. The key difference between traditional student teams and virtual teams is that members are no longer colocated. Some may be working out of their home. Table 1 depicts major differences between traditional and virtual teams.

The above differences impose various forces on the effectiveness of team work. In particular, geographic dispersion, coordination breakdown, communication substance, and team cohesion are effected as a result of distance learning. Each one

Collaborative Technology

of these forces will be analyzed to better understand their impact and sound solutions will be suggested to counter and mitigate them.

•Dispersion: The discussion of dispersion vs. colocation highlights what we know intuitively, that is, it is harder to manage from a distance. Shorter project timelines via the ability to give feedback quickly and shortercommunicationlinesarewell-known

(Rafii, 1995).

•Breakdown of Traditional Control and Coordination: The overhead of control and coordination experienced by students is significant. Coordination is the act of integrating each task to a coherent unit so that it contributes to the overall objective of the project(Ferber,1994).Distributed/dispersed teams create further burdens; primarily the informalonesduetointerdependencyamong tasks and difficulty in effective decision making in online environments.

•Communication Richness: The substance of communication refers to the richness of interaction. Rich communication entails two-wayinteractioninvolvingmorethanone sensory channel (Trevino, Daft, & Lengel, 1987). Team members need rich interaction stylestocollaborate and convey information accurately and timely manner.

•TeamCohesiveness:A“real”teamhasacollective responsibility for the project, shares responsibility for managing the tasks, has a common goal, and works together on tasks that are interdependent. Cohesion is one of the differences between a successful and unsuccessful team. Distance is impediment to building relationships of trust, and it may take considerable time in distance learning settings.

technologies and Methodologies for effective team-based distance learning

Variouspromisingtechnologiesandmethodologies counter the challenges discussed above. Table 2 depicts the main categories of such technologies.

While collaborative technology has been promotedasasignificantenablerthatfacilitatesteam cooperation, its focus is mainly on mechanisms to improve collaboration and explicit coordination of activities. Yet, it is widely acknowledged that sustaining effective operation of teams relies on establishing shared mental models via implicit coordinationstrategies(Espinosa,Lerch,&Kraut, 2004). While the links between theoretical approaches form cognitive science and education groupware are not lacking in theory, far fewer

Table 2. Effective methodologies/technologies for improving team effectiveness

Methodology/Technology	Synopsis
Collaborative technology	Collaborative technology supports two key communication objectives: fostering informal commu-
	nication between peers in a team and bringing new forms of formal communication via groupware
	software that facilitates location transparency to bring distant team members closer. The effects of
	distance, coordination breakdown, and communication loss are counterbalanced with proper collab-
	orative technologies.
Telecommunications	Telecommunication infrastructure is the foundation for enabling reliable, high bandwidth network.
infrastructure	Virtual private networks are increasingly common channel connecting professional teams and can be
	used in educational domains.
Instructional techniques	Instructional techniques pertain to allocation of roles in teams and paying attention to human factors
	issues such as rewarding, recognizing effective teamwork, and managing conflict between members
	of a team.
Team building methodologies	To facilitate effective education in a team context, the formation of teams should take into account the
	impact of team workload, team size, team composition, team structure, and team cohesion.

0

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methodologies are used in existing groupware systems to foster their development.

Collaborativetechnologyineducationalgroupware systems that support distance education often (1) serves as a team memory and knowledge center, (2) provides a basis to inform all members regarding tasks, status information, people, and other dynamic project information, (3) reduces duplication of effort, (4) supports coordination of activities as well as the workflow, and (5) helps maintainqualityofartifactsproducedbystudents. However, education groupware systems provide limited support for group workspace awareness.

Configuration management of artifacts, project statusinformation,notificationservices,activity scheduling and tasking, and team memory and knowledge center features are among the needed functionstominimallysupportworkspaceawareness in collaborative distance education settings. Collaborative situations constrain collaboration to the environment in which interaction takes place among people, the type of systems they use to support distributed collaboration, and the tasks that people do.

•Environment—Shared workspace: The environmentisthesharedprojectworkspace through which users exchange and share artifacts related to their activities.

•Systems—Distributed groupware: Distributed groupware allows members of a team to work from different locations at the same or at different times depending on whether the system is real-time or asynchronous.

•Tasks: The main tasks in shared workspace are the creation, manipulation, and navigation through artifacts and execution of activities that pertain to these tasks.

•Groups—Small and focused groups: The activitiesintheseworkspacesarecarriedout bygroupsoftwotofivestudents,whoengage in collaborative tasks. The students often shift back and forth between individual and shared activities during a work session.

RequiReMents foR next geneRation educational gRouPwaRe: issues and PRobleMs

Student group project management, one of the most cooperation-intensive activities in group projects, presents significant difficulties when projectmembersaredistributed.Becauseoflackof socialcontact,geographicallydistributedstudents withoutappropriate tool support may have trouble in attaining a consistent and coherent understanding of the status of the project. The position advocated in this chapter is that alleviation of these difficultiesrequiresintegratingpropereducational groupware systems that support cooperation in students’ project workspace. The question is why the work environments in typical educational groupware systems do not support group projects effectively and efficiently. Furthermore, what functionalities might a cooperation component of a groupware system support to correct these deficiencies? To better respond to this question we need to elaborate on the characteristics and elements of cooperation.

basic Methods of cooperation

The concept of interaction is central to the issue of cooperation. Interaction occurs when two or more students are brought into a dynamic relationship throughasetofreciprocalactions.Dependingonthe compatibilityorincompatibilityofgoals,theavailabilityofresourcesandskills,interactionsituations can be classified as independence, cooperation, or antagonism. The type of interaction of interest for the purpose of group project management is cooperation. To develop groupware systems, it is essential to understand the means for realization of the conditions for cooperation.

The first method, called grouping, consists very simply of arranging team members to obtain a more or less homogeneous unit in space or a communication network. The second method,

called communication, entails having a system that facilitates exchanging messages between members of a team. Specialization is the process through which team members become more and more adapted to their tasks. Implicit coordination via team cognition facilities are needed to take advantage of the specialization of team members.

Collaboration by sharing tasks and resources involves techniques to distribute resources, information, and tasks among students based on their roles and specialization. Coordination of actions refers to coordinating the activities of individual team members and integrates each task to a coherent unit so that it contributes to the overall objective. Finally, conflict resolution via arbitration and negotiation pertains to resolving disagreements and preventing the performance of the team from deteriorating.

grouping

Arranging students into small groups to form either a homogeneous unit or a social network allowing them to behave as if they are physically sidebysideisafirststepinenablingcooperative behavior.Onecanconsideragroupasadistributed organism.Therearespecialistsinfindingtheright resources, and specialists in using the required tools in an efficient and effective manner.

communication and discussion

Many educational IT projects in distance learning environments share project artifacts via e-mailed text documents. Students may communicate further by phone, e-mail, video conference, or chat toresolveambiguitiesinthedocumentandrefine it. The lack of sophisticated integrative tools that integrateprojectmanagementandcommunication leads to frequent context switching between task accomplishment and interactions. Fragmentation of content across several media due to multiple channelsofcommunicationinhibitsestablishinga

Collaborative Technology

common shared model of the project. As a result, students need more intuitive and seamless integration of informal collaboration facilities with the project management and awareness space. That is, educational groupware systems should provide facilities for not only documenting the artifacts developed during the group project but foralsoholdingrichcontextualdiscussionsaround the project needs. Navigation from a particular discussion to a requirement and design artifact or the other way around would enable flexible and easy dissemination of ongoing discussions.

specialization

Specialization is the process through which studentsplayrolesandadapttospecifictasksduring theproject.Itisoftendifficulttoincludestudents in agroup thatcan specializeinall tasks. Carrying out a task with a reasonable level of performance implies possession of specific structural and behavioral characteristics, which do not allow other tasks to be carried out efficiently. Also, there are many roads to learning. That is why group project designsoftenrequireestablishingroledefinitions for students at the very beginning. Students bring different talents and styles of learning. Students rich in hands-on experience and problem solving activities such as programming and design may not do so well with problem analysis activities. Studentsneedtheopportunitytoshowtheirtalents and learn in ways that work for them.

collaboration by sharing tasks and Resources

Collaborationconsistsofseveralstudentsworking together on a project, a common task. We consider collaboration mechanisms as being all those facilitiesthatenablestudentsplayingspecificroles to distribute tasks, information, and resources to solve the problems pertaining to the project under consideration. In an educational groupware system, collaboration requires workspace aware-

Collaborative Technology

Table 3. Elements of project workspace awareness

Category	Element	Issues of Interest
Who	Presence	Is anyone in the workspace?
	Identity	Who is participating?
	Task assignment	Who is doing what?
What	Action	What are they doing?
	Goal	What intention is the action part of?
	Artifact	What object are they working on?
Where	Location	Where are they working?
	Extent	What artifacts can they access?

Table 4. Elements of social network

		Students	Knowledge	Resource	Task	Team
		Social interaction	Knowledge	Capacity	Task allocation	Assignment
		network	acquisition network	network	network	network
	Students	who knows who	who knows what	who has what	who is assigned	who is assigned to
					to what	what team
			what knowledge is	what knowledge	what knowledge	what knowledge is
	Knowledge			is needed to
			needed to derive X		is needed for Z	located where
				use Y
				what resources	what resources	what resources are
	Resource			can be used with
					are needed for Z	located where
				resource Y
	Task				what task pre-	what tasks are per-
					cedes task Z	formed where
	Team					which teams work
						with which teams

ness. The elements of workspace awareness are shown in Table 3.

The awareness of presence and identity is simply the knowledge that there are others involved in the project, and who they are. Task assignment pertains to mapping tasks to individuals in a group.

The second category in Table 3 depicts the issues pertaining to awareness about what actions are being performed by whom and for what objective. Finally, the third category deals with the location information as well as the knowledge about the extent of access of individuals in the project. On the other hand, social organization perspective imposed on the interactions among

teams and engineers depends on the management style,culture,norms,values,andconfigurationof the social networks presented in Table 1.

coordination of actions

Managing the activities of a number of students requires carrying out supplementary tasks, which are not necessarily productive. However, these tasks aim to ensure that the productive actions can be accomplished in a consistent and coherent mannertofulfilltherequirementsimposedbythe overall process. The action coordination phase involves the definition of the order of actions to be carried out.

Figure 1. Required cooperation activities of the groupware system

Conflict Resolution

Collaboration among students in producing the desiredandnecessaryartifactsofthegroupproject mayresultinconflictsduetolimitationsofexisting resources as well as goal incompatibilities. Arbitration and negotiation are two of the means used in resolving conflicts, to stop disagreements between students from turning into open struggles, and to prevent the performance of the team as a whole from deteriorating. Arbitration is based on the definition of rules of behavior, which act as constraints on the group of students in engaging and furthering the progress of the project.Theireffectistolimitconflictsbyavoiding situations that are conducive to goal and action incompatibilities. The negotiation strategy, on the other hand, is based on the premise that agents can resolve their conflicts by seeking a bilateral agreement through a negotiation process.

The functions and methods of cooperation are interconnected. Figure 1 illustrates the elements of the cooperation activities. At the center of the

Collaborative Technology

system, the social network and the related data that capture resource, student, team, task, and knowledge pertaining to artifacts are stored. Communication and decision makingsubsystems operate over the core knowledge-base and social network to facilitate collaboration, coordination, and conflict resolution functions defined at the outer layer. Increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of cooperation and workspace awareness involves improving the performance levels of students. This requires the application of methods such as grouping and differentiation of roles. However, these methods themselves raise issues such as distribution of tasks, increased level of conflicts due to access to shared resources, and lackofcoordination.Themethodsusedincommunication, task allocation, coordination of actions, and conflictresolutionaimtoaddresstheseissues and to improve awareness and hence performance levels of the group. However, these techniques need to be structured within a groupware system that takes the way in which students and heir roles are positioned in relation to each other and how they can effectively work together.

suPPoRting awaReness in distRibuted educational gRouPwaRe: two case studies

In IT education, despite the criticality of fully understanding a problem prior to solution generation phase, research has shown (e.g., Moreland & Levine, 1992) that teams show little inclination to engage in the problem formulation aspect of the problem solving task. Using the basic methods of cooperation discussed above, in this section, we will elaborate on how an ideal collaborative education tool can be used to construct a shared mentalmodelamongstudentsinateamtoimprove their effectiveness.

Collaborative Technology

Figure 2. Interaction of students playing roles to coordinate their actions

Managing communication and discussion

Whenstudentscollaborateinaprojectworkspace, they shift seamlessly back and forth between individual and shared work (Dourish & Belotti, 1992;Gaver,1991).Thedegreetowhichpeopleare working together is called coupling. The reasons why the members of a team move from loose to tight coupling is they need to discuss or decide on the contents of a project deliverable, to plan the next activity in the process, or that their current task needs engagement of another student.

Consider for instance a scenario where a student who acts as a reviewer needs to identify the right stakeholders (team members) to discuss the project requirements. In this scenario, the student looks up the online status of the student’s peers in

the group using the workspace awareness service and initiates communication depending on the availability of the peer student. To denote the significanceofcontextexplicitlyandtofacilitate ease of navigation, the student who initiates the communication embeds links to the requirements in the student’s messages. The communication history is logged to the repository and marked to facilitate awareness so that other team members can track ongoing discussions.

Figure 2 is a collaboration diagram that depicts the above scenario in terms of the interaction among students playing roles to coordinate their actions. The scenario presented in Figure 2 implies a number of tool considerations, some of which are presented in the previous section. The interaction startswhen astudentwith thereviewer role consults with the knowledge repository to