The objective for this virtual team building project is to establish a sustainable knowledge-building network. While one concrete milestone was to publish a book authored by this virtual team, a broader objective was to create an environment that had the potential to spawn additional collaborative projects for virtual based joint research. Such an environment, which represents a community of practice, would require the cultivation (Wenger et al. 2006, p.12) of professional interaction and relationships beyond the author-to-reviewer-to-editor relationships of traditional publication projects.
This unique project between two universities, located in the US and in Norway and their related research partners is separated across the globe. This paper will examine the process of virtual team building to support a international research collaboration. Targets and tools used during the process included online conferencing, an online workshop for supporting paper writing with pre-post
online activities, as well as the use of several digital tools.
Theoretical Framework: Virtual team building using technology seeks to enable colleagues to work together and gain results similar to local face-to-face working teams. Well known models for Virtual Teambuilding are these of Gersick (1988) and of Tuckman & Jensen (1977). They can be seen as cornerstones for all kinds of team building research and practice (Bonebright, 2010).
Tuckman & Jensen’s model (1977) is a group development process model. Their model uses the developmental stage paradigm that focuses on the stages themselves, since all systems are assumed to progress through the same stages in a forward direction. Gersick’s model (1988) focuses more deeply on the notion that teams progress in a pattern of "punctuated equilibrium," alternating inertia and revolution in the behaviors and themes that occur during the course of work. Gersick’s model specifically focuses on the process and triggers of change in a group development.
Another focus in this study is on the activities applied during ongoing virtual teamwork. For this, a study of Lin, Standing & Liu (2008) is used as reference. Their meta-analysis and revised model are valuable because they established five factors as main drives for effective virtual teams (performance). The concepts used by this group seem especially useful for the study described here. These are as well overlapping with the constructs Haythornthwaite mentiones as necessary for networking people which is task, information and social support (Haythorntwaite & Andrews, 2011) and trust (Holton, 2001).
The project involved two parallel team building processes by two interacting different teams. The 'inner team' (the participants of the research workshop) and the 'outer team' which is the organizing, editorial, research team. A characteristic of the outer team is its interdisciplinarity and that of their different roles in the academic community. This heterogeneity of competences of the outer team could be seen as distributed knowledge which might be shared and developed related to Vygotsky’s proximal zone of development (Vygotsky, 1978).
Research questions:
RQ1: In which ways does the teambuilding processes and results correspond to the established virtual team building model(s)?
RQ 2: What distinguishes our online based knowledge building team, tools and processes form traditional ones and what added actually value?
The phenomenon of virtual distance (Sobel Lojeski, 2009) has been addressed by short time mutual visits (2 times a year) by the outer team. This is in concordance to Sobel Lojeski's model which shows that f2f meetings even if short and not frequently reduce the perceived virtual distance in global teams.
Research on the inner team has already started and will be presented as a project approach at EdMedia (Unpublished conference paper EdMedia, 2016).
