FORMATION OF TEAM WORKING SKILLS BY APPLYING

DISTANCE LEARNING METHODS

Virgilijus Sakalauskas and Dalia Kriksciuniene

Department of Informatics, Vilnius University, Muitines 8, 44280 Kaunas, Lithuania

Keywords: Distance learning, Virtual teamwork, Test, Evaluation criteria.

Abstract: In this article the problematic of formation of teams, working in the distance learning (DL) environment is

analysed. It seeks to reveal the specific functions of virtual teamwork, effectiveness of tools and

technologies for communication, and collaboration levels. This research should promote the teamwork skills

for students, and to elaborate highlights, how the DL courses have to be prepared, what type of tasks and

course materials may be used, what is optimal size of the team and the demanded time frame. The

evaluation systems, criteria, tests and necessity for self-control tasks are discussed. The article reveals

benefits of teamwork for utilization of distance learning materials. The article is based on the case of

preparing the DL modules within the framework of the project, supported by structural funds of European

Union „The integral development of Lithuanian distance learning system“.

1 INTRODUCTION

Distance learning courses and their perspectives of

substituting traditional learning practice recently

became popular and encouraged by education

institutions. It is expected that DL could help in

managing the growing number of students,

overcome descending studies financing, reduce

immoderate load of traditional work for teachers and

assist in students' willingness to combine studies and

work. In their attempts to define the concept of DL

studies (Horton, 2003, Perraton, 2000), emphasise

three different aspects of this learning mode:

distance, time and form. Distance would mean the

opportunity to study via individual access to remote

knowledge terminal only having internet connection.

Time factor gives freedom to study at the convenient

time, planned by student, and the form means the

opportunity to use the most advanced video,

multimedia and internet facilities.

Many advocates for DL (Talbot, 2003) indicate

and other advantages, such as opportunity for

simultaneous studies for a big amount of people,

personalization of studying programs, easy ways to

adjust the speed of studying with the needs of each

student, and therefore making the learning process

cheaper, flexible and easier managed by instructors

and students. In DL different teaching methods are

combined in order to assist students to choose the

most acceptable study way (Wright, 2003). In most

cases these are individual, personal studies, but the

future career requires ability to utilize knowledge in

corporate work, therefore learning in groups and

development of teamwork skills is an important

aspect while mastering the course material.

This article is prepared based on the experience

derived from the running DL courses “Statistical

analysis of the business environment” and “Modern

information technologies in public administration”,

developed within the project „The integral

development of Lithuanian distance learning

system“, supported according to framework of

European Union structural funds.

In the following chapters we substantiate the

necessity to form the teamwork skills in DL, discuss

the tools of communication within virtual learning

teams, present the summary of survey research

aimed to discuss factors, affecting accomplishing

study tasks in teamwork, and evaluation of students.

2 COMMUNICATION OF

VIRTUAL TEAMS

Virtual team is the group of specialists, organized by

the qualification, needed for completion of provided

task, independent of their geographical location and

131

Sakalauskas V. and Kriksciuniene D. (2009).

FORMATION OF TEAM WORKING SKILLS BY APPLYING DISTANCE LEARNING METHODS.

In Proceedings of the First International Conference on Computer Supported Education, pages 131-134

DOI: 10.5220/0001988001310134

 SciTePress

securing their communication by communicative

nets in virtual space (Wainfan, 2005). The main

differences of traditional and virtual working teams

are presented in Table 1. We apply this study mode

in distance learning environment, where teamwork is

understood as accomplishment of study task in

communication of virtual team members.

Table 1: Communication of traditional and virtual teams.

Traditional team Virtual team

Communicates visibly Virtual, video and audio

communication

Fixed time and space for

communication

Unlimited participation by

space and time

Based on the cooperation of

people

Based on the application of

internet technologies

Culture of cooperation,

motivation is based on the

communication of people

Communication code, activity

evaluation is based on virtual

means

Obvious relationship

between privacy and

corporate communication

The sense of participation is

secured by means of

communication

Virtual teams provide flexibility of communication

in sense of six levels: time, spread, consistency,

environment, approach and content (Table 2). Hence

it is common to allocate tools and technologies of

virtual teams also to six levels (Schoop, 2005,2006).

During learning process the students have to

accomplish big variety of tasks. In team learning the

communication component is added which is made

even more specific as it is realized in the virtual

space. The selection of tools for applying in distance

learning depend on the learning environment and

choice of course teacher, however, the more

technologies we use in our course, the stronger

teamwork skills will be developed.

The method for forming virtual teams is not

usually restricted by the learning environment, and

mostly depends on the moderator of the course. The

teams can be formed spontaneously or by using

established rules regarding size, competences, and

roles (Schoop et al 2005, 2006). The activities

within the team can be supported by communication

tools, implemented in such learning environments as

Blackboard, WebCT, Moodle, CDK. They are quite

widespread in most enterprises therefore add to

development of students ability to effectively work

in teams. The main communication tools include

asynchronic tools (e-mail, bulletin boards),

synchronic tools (chat, forums, meeting tools),

graphic environments (whiteboard), sharing feature

(sharing screen, files and documents, synchronic

work with files), time management tools (task

calendars, lists, evaluation of work progress).

Table 2: Tools and technologies of virtual teams.

Time

Synchronic (conference) and asynchronic

(message) communication forum with

constant approach

Spread

Group and individual tools of

communication, virtual communication,

real communication, videoconferences.

Consistency

Sources of information are chosen and

differently composed, work consistency

and coordination is discussed, ideas are

freely formulated, knowledge from various

spheres are integrated, unlimited

participation in discussions according to

the role, competence or by the initiative of

the member of the team.

Environment

Discussion forum, document storage, e-

mail, graphic means, tools for creating the

content of internet pages (e.g. content

management system), the tool of providing

organic information (e.g. wiki)

Approach

Constant approach to forum, unlimited

storage of provided information in it,

storage of discussion material

Content

Any digital form: text, graphic, video, link,

emotion and other.

When forming skills of collective work, the main

role is played by the practical tasks. Practical tasks

have to be fairly wide, creative, promoting collective

initiative of the students and not limiting their

individuality. It must be endeavoured that the team

of participants, when accomplishing the task, would

be able to distribute the work in such a way that the

input of all participants would be very important. It

is not easy to create such tasks in all courses, but

where it succeeds, the results satisfy course curators

as well as participants.

When creating DL courses “Statistical analysis

of business environment” and “Modern information

technologies in public administration” we attempted

to follow above listed principals. We have chosen

tools to prepare distance learning courses that would

allow implementing all aspects of collective-team

work. Our courses were installed in Blackboard and

CDK systems that widely promote teamwork using

e-mail, chats, bulletin board, Whiteboard and file

exchange.

Considering that, we foresaw for each team of

first year students three tasks. They covered

different themes of theoretical course and allowed to

study in stages. For the second year students bigger

teams of 4-5 persons were formed, and only one big

task was foreseen which covered all material of the

course and demanded constant and cohesive

teamwork during the whole time of the course.

The distance learning courses can be found on

the Lithuanian distance learning website

http://herculis.ktu.lt:8080/cms/liedm/app

. This site

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132

also demonstrates the increasing popularity and

quality of DL courses.

3 PROBLEM ANALYSIS BY

USING SURVEY RESEARCH

The survey research was prepared in order to find

out the opinion of the participants of various aspects

of distance learning courses, including effectiveness,

sources of positive and negative outcomes and

usefulness of implementing them in DL courses.

Me n

4891

Wo m e n

11 14 7 2

2345

Figure 1: Preferred number of team members.

The survey was answered by 56 participants of two

DL courses: 31 participants of the course “Statistical

analysis of business environment” and 25

participants of the course “Modern information

technologies in public administration.”

The idea of application teamwork in DL courses

was evaluated positively by 89.3% respondents.

Only 6 members preferred to work individually, as

they experienced disappointment by their team.

Defining optimal size of the team appeared to be

very important issue, where men and women had

diverse opinions to it (Figure 1).

Men preferred bigger teams of 3-4 people, and

women would rather work in teams of 2-3 people.

The question of team forming principles had two

opinions: men preferred to choose team members

themselves, while women tended to agree to group

in accidental order. Almost 95% of respondents (53

participants) claimed that most productive teams

will be mixed, but consisting of different number of

men and women. Most popular suggestions for the

team composition were 2 men and 1 woman or 1

woman and 2 men.

Majority of respondents agreed that the tasks where

teamwork could be most important were elaboration

of the final project and passing interim tests. As

respondents noted, participation in teamwork had no

influence to studying and accomplishment of

individual self-control tests.

Definition of roles inside the team was among

the most important issues. The team leader and

report writer roles were accepted without any

doubts. But the opinions about the need of other

recommended roles (Schoop et al 2005, 2006), such

as problem analytic, critic, researcher, and guru in

computers were rather diverse. The opinion of men

and women differed a lot while ranking most

important qualities of team members. Men would

like that their partners would be initiative

(determined), intellectual and friendly, while women

put friendship, punctuality and intellectuality to the

first place (Figure 2).

Me n

4107 1

Wo m e n

15 4 7 8

friendliness activeness intelligence punctuality

Figure 2: Team members qualities’ repartition.

Though DL is generally considered to provide more

freedom of time planning for the learner, the

teamwork was evaluated as time consuming activity,

therefore on of important issues was to plan the

workload both for studying DL materials and to

communicate within the team. 85% of respondents

stated that distance studies for one subject should

not exceed 4 hours a week. The teams would agree

to contact twice a week regarding solution of self-

control tasks.

Though there is several evaluation systems

suggested in the research literature, the mechanism

for knowledge evaluation should be discussed with

the learners, as no system could be rigidly adopted

without loss of motivation or productivity. If the task

is meant for team, is it sufficient to have team

evaluation? All respondents wanted to be evaluated

as the team. However, in the higher education

school, we have to evaluate students individually for

the knowledge they show. One of the solutions was

to assign the same grade to all team members. In our

survey we tried to find out, what kind of evaluation

FORMATION OF TEAM WORKING SKILLS BY APPLYING DISTANCE LEARNING METHODS

133

seemed most fair to students themselves. We were

surprised by the result. Respondents unanimously

agreed with the opinion, that in small teams of 2

persons, their evaluation marks should be equal. For

bigger teams, the most acceptable way of individual

evaluation for students was to use self evaluation

surveys, which would reflect the individual input of

each team member, and which could alter individual

evaluation by one mark from general evaluation of

the team result. Therefore every member of the team

evaluated the input of the other members by giving

them marks up to ten, and according to the results,

the moderator of the course assigned the final

evaluation. Let’s say the group consisted of 4

members: A, B, C and D. The general evaluation of

their work was 8, and the distribution of self

evaluation inside the team as in Table 3:

Table 3: Internal team evaluation.

A B C D

A 6 3 1

B 5 3 2

C 7 3 0

D 4 3 3

Total 16 12 9 3

Final evaluation of every team member was adjusted

according to the rule: one point was added for the

best member of the team to the team mark 8, which

was given by the moderator, and one point was

deducted from the team member with worst input.

Therefore A will be evaluated 9, B and C – 8 and D

only 7.

4 SUMMARY

The article presents research of teamwork skills

formation in the distance learning environment. The

features of learning in virtual teams were specified,

communication tools, activities and levels of virtual

teams were discussed. The empirical research by

means of survey was aimed to analyze the most

effective size of teams, preferences of characteristics

of team members.

The survey outcomes confirmed the hypothesis,

that students prefer teamwork in groups of 3-4

people, mixed of men and women. The best ranked

qualities of team members were friendliness,

activeness, intelligence and punctuality. Despite

wide selection of communication tools of the

distance learning environment, the most suitable

forms of communication for the team were contact

in person, real time chat, e-mail and SMS. The final

evaluation issues were one of the most time

consuming activities for the tutor. Though the final

grade consisted of the individual and team

components, the research revealed, that the

differences in final grade depended of the team size.

The marks should not differ for both members of

two-person teams, and for bigger teams it could not

differ in more than one mark from the general team

evaluation, given by moderator, while the mark of

the best ranked team member is upgraded, and the

mark of the worst is lowered.

In conclusion we can state that accomplishment

of tasks in teamwork not only helps students to

master the course easier, but also increases the

motivation of studying and prepares them for the

future career activities in the working teams.

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