Incorporating Cultural Factors into the Design of Technology to Support Teamwork in Higher Education

Wesam Shishah, Elizabeth FitzGerald

2016

Abstract

Online teamwork is an instructional strategy widely used in education courses to ensure active knowledge construction and deeper learning. There is a challenge for online course designers and technology designers to create group environments that encourage participation, and have the ability to enhance positive attitudes toward group work. It is hypothesised that incorporating cultural factors into the design of teamwork technology has the potential to encourage participation and increase students’ positive attitudes towards group work. This paper looks to do exactly that, although the definition of culture in this paper is limited to the individualism–collectivism dimension. The paper summarises our findings from interviews conducted with lecturers and students who have experience with teamwork. It then presents culturally-related design strategies which are identified from cross-cultural psychology literature and our interviews finding. Finally, it demonstrates how culturally-related design strategies are incorporated into the IdeasRoom prototype design.

References

  1. Aronson, J., (1994), A Pragmatic View of Thematic Analysis by Jodi Aronson, The Qualitative Report, 2, pp.1-3.
  2. Bishop, J.W., Chen, X. & Scott, K.D., (1999), What drives Chinese toward teamwork? A study of US-invested companies in China.
  3. Cárdenas, J.C. & Mantilla, C., (2015), Between-group competition, intra-group cooperation and relative performance, Frontiers in behavioural neuroscience, 9.
  4. Cox, T.H., Lobel, S.A. & McLeod, P.L., (1991), Effects Of Ethnic Group Cultural Differences On Cooperative And Competitive Behavior On A Group Task, Academy of Management Journal, 34(4), pp.827-847.
  5. Drury, H., Kay, J. & Losberg, W., 2003. Student satisfaction with groupwork in undergraduate computer science: do things get better? In Proceedings of the fifth Australasian conference on Computing educationVolume 20. Australian Computer Society, Inc., pp. 77- 85.
  6. Erez, M. & Earley, P.C., (1993), Culture, self-identity and work.
  7. Evers, V., (2001), Cultural aspects of user interface understanding: an empirical evaluation of an e-learning website by international user groups.
  8. Fadil, P.A., Williamson, S. & Knudstrup, M., (2009), A theoretical perspective of the cultural influences of individualism/collectivism, group membership, and performance variation on allocation behaviors of supervisors, Competitiveness Review: An International Business Journal, 19(2), pp.134-150.
  9. Galanes, G.J., Adams, K.H. & Brilhart, J.K., (2003), Effective group discussion: Theory and practice, McGraw-Hill Humanities Social.
  10. Gelfand, M.J., Erez, M. & Aycan, Z., (2007), Cross-cultural organizational behaviour, Annual review of psychology, 58, pp.479-514.
  11. Gibbs, G., (2009), The assessment of group work: lessons from the literature, Assessment Standards Knowledge Exchange.
  12. Goo, A.B., (2011), Team-based Learning and Social Loafing in Higher Education.
  13. Hall, E.T., (1989), Beyond Culture, Anchor.
  14. Hausken, K., (2000), Cooperation and between-group competition, Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 42(3), pp.417-425.
  15. Hofstede, G., Hofstede, G. J., & Minkov, M. (2010). Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind (3rd ed.): McGraw-Hill.
  16. Hofstede, G.H., (2001), Culture's consequences: Comparing values, behaviors, institutions and organizations across nations, Sage.
  17. Hofstede, G.H., (1996), Cultures and Organizations, Software of the Mind: Intercultural Cooperation and its Importance for Survival.
  18. Khaled, R., (2008), Culturally-Relevant Persuasive Technology, Pt Design, p.256.
  19. Kim, J.H., 2013. Information and culture: Cultural differences in the perception and recall of information. Library and Information Science Research, 35(3), pp.241-250.
  20. Leibbrandt, A., Gneezy, U. & List, J.A, (2013), Rise and fall of competitiveness in individualistic and collectivistic societies, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 110(23), pp.9305-8.
  21. Mann, L., Radford, M. & Kanagawa, C., (1985), Crosscultural differences in children's use of decision rules: A comparison between Japan and Australia, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 49(6), pp.1557- 1564.
  22. Markus, H.R. & Kitayama, S., (1991), Culture and the self: Implications for cognition, emotion, and motivation, Psychological Review, 98(2), pp.224-253.
  23. Myers, S.A., Bogdan, L.M., Eidsness, M.A., Johnson, A.N., Schoo, M.E., Smith, N.A., Thompson, M.R. and Zackery, B.A., 2009. Taking A Trait Approach To Understanding College Students'perceptions Of Group Work. College Student Journal, 43(3), p.822.
  24. McSweeney, B., 2002. Hofstede's Model of National Cultural Differences and their Consequences: A Triumph of Faith - a Failure of Analysis. Human Relations, 55(1),
  25. Merkin, R. & Ramadan, R., (2010), Facework in Syria and the United States: A cross-cultural comparison, International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 34(6), pp.661-669.
  26. Mittelmeier, Jenna; Heliot, Y.; Rienties, B. and Whitelock, D. (2015). The role culture and personality play in an authentic online group learning experience. In: Proceedings of the 22nd EDINEB Conference: Critically Questioning Educational Innovation in Economics and Business: Human Interaction in a Virtualising World (Daly, P.; Reid, K.; Buckley, P. and Reeve, S. eds.), 03-05 June 2015, Brighton, UK, EDiNEB Association, pp. 139-149.
  27. Plueddemann, J.E., (2012), Leading across cultures: Effective ministry and mission in the global church, Inter Varsity Press.
  28. Powell, A., Piccoli, G. & Ives, B., (2004), Virtual Teams: A Review of Current Literature and Directions for Future Research, ACM SIGMIS Database, 35(1), pp.6- 36.
  29. Sagie, A. & Aycan, Z., (2003), A Cross-Cultural Analysis of Participative Decision-Making in Organizations, Human Relations, 56(4), pp.453-473.
  30. Shih, P.C. and Venolia, G. and Olson, G.M., (2011), Brainstorming Under Constraints: Why Software Developers Brainstorm in Groups, In Proceedings of the 25th BCS Conference on Human-Computer Interaction. pp. 74-83.
  31. Shulruf, B., Hattie, J. & Dixon, R., (2007), Development of a New Measurement Tool for Individualism and Collectivism, Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment, 25(4), pp.385-401.
  32. Smith, C. & Bath, D., (2006), The role of the learning community in the development of discipline knowledge and generic graduate outcomes, Higher Education, 51(2), pp.259-286.
  33. Smith, G.G. et al., (2011), Overcoming student resistance to group work: Online versus face-to-face, Internet and Higher Education, 14(2), pp.121-128.
  34. Triandis, H.C., (1994), Culture and social behaviour, McGraw-Hill Book Company.
  35. Triandis, H.C., (1995), Individualism & collectivism, Westview Press.
  36. Triandis, H.C., (2001), Individualism-collectivism and personality, Journal of personality, 69(6), pp.907-924.
  37. Tutty, J.I. & Klein, J.D., (2008), Computer-mediated instruction: A comparison of online and face-to-face collaboration, Educational Technology Research and Development, 56(2), pp.101-124.
  38. Vöhringer-Kuhnt, T., (2002), The influence of culture on usability, Department of Educational Sciences and Psychology, Berlin, Germany: Freie Universität Berlin.
Download


Paper Citation


in Harvard Style

Shishah W. and FitzGerald E. (2016). Incorporating Cultural Factors into the Design of Technology to Support Teamwork in Higher Education . In Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Computer Supported Education - Volume 1: CSEDU, ISBN 978-989-758-179-3, pages 55-66. DOI: 10.5220/0005760800550066


in Bibtex Style

@conference{csedu16,
author={Wesam Shishah and Elizabeth FitzGerald},
title={Incorporating Cultural Factors into the Design of Technology to Support Teamwork in Higher Education},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Computer Supported Education - Volume 1: CSEDU,},
year={2016},
pages={55-66},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0005760800550066},
isbn={978-989-758-179-3},
}


in EndNote Style

TY - CONF
JO - Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Computer Supported Education - Volume 1: CSEDU,
TI - Incorporating Cultural Factors into the Design of Technology to Support Teamwork in Higher Education
SN - 978-989-758-179-3
AU - Shishah W.
AU - FitzGerald E.
PY - 2016
SP - 55
EP - 66
DO - 10.5220/0005760800550066