Virtual Worlds Archives - Leading Virtually

Recent News on Social Media

Rebecca Jestice — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 19:05:10 +0000

This week I have run across some very interesting articles on social media and how their use is evolving. These two articles struck me as interesting because they discuss requiring people to use Facebook or Second Life in order to perform in classes or on the job. I think these use-cases highlight that we desire to use social tools available to us, and use them in ways that are beneficial to clients, colleagues, and students. But they also highlight that, as with any new system we adopt, there should be measures of their effectiveness, a case made for why they are our top choices, and clear guidelines for requiring people to join and provide personal information to third party applications.

An article in The Chronicle of Higher Education revealed that Penn State’s online campus is now requiring student advisers to offer meeting hours in Second Life for students. Advisers are required to offer at least 2 hours a week of availability in Second Life for meeting with students in addition to the other regular methods of communication. This will be an interesting case to watch, as it is requiring advisers to join a third party application to do their jobs. It is also curious because it is bringing something personal–student advising–into an open forum where privacy could potentially be an issue. Quotes from the social-networks adviser at Penn State indicate that, once trained in the basics of Second Life, the advisers are enjoying their time there. So far, I have seen no mention of success such as the students finding it beneficial, or finding it beneficial in ways beyond what other communication channels offer them. Perhaps the program is too new for analysis of its success at this stage.

A blog post, also from The Chronicle, discussed a teacher who has his students friend him on Facebook as a requirement for his business course. The Illinois State University professor uses Facebook as his course management system and requires students to friend him on the first day of class. The professor will work with students to adjust privacy settings on Facebook if they have some reservations about the set up. Assignments are submitted through students’ profile pages and questions can be asked by posting to the professor’s wall. At the end of the semester the professor de-friends all of his students and claims that he does not peruse their profiles. Again, currently I don’t see any discussion of whether or not the students find this as or more beneficial than a school supplied course management system, which operates behind a firewall, out of the public space.

In this case, the professor states that part of his point in using Facebook is teaching students that their online presence becomes part of their digital resume and that the World Wide Web doesn’t forget what you’ve posted or put into the public forum online. In this case students are required to belong to a third party application (one that has been criticized for its privacy measures in the past) in order to successfully complete their course.

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Using a Virtual World for Multiple Audiences: Benefits & Challenges

Rebecca Jestice — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 18:44:31 +0000

At the Academy of Management meeting earlier this month, I had the pleasure of assisting Dr. Ulrike Schultze in a session that she coordinated. The panelists at the session were respected journal editors. What was different about this session from other sessions at the annual meeting was that it was held simultaneously in Second Life and the hotel in Chicago. It was an experiment of sorts to see how virtual world technology could bring conference events to those who were unable to travel to the actual event.

The session consisted of presentations by 4 panelists. Three of the panelists were at the Academy of Management meeting and presented to a live audience there. They also had avatars in Second Life in the meeting room there. The other panelist joined the meeting via Second Life with his avatar. Power point slides that the panelists used were shown through Second Life, so attendees in SL could see the slides in the meeting room there. The slides, and the SL meeting room/avatars, were broadcast to the live audience through a projector. Audio from SL was broadcast through speakers to the meeting room in Chicago, and audio into SL was broadcast through a microphone. The session lasted about one and a half hours. I was fortunate to be able to assist Dr. Schultze with the technological side of the session; it was a good learning experience in some of the potential benefits and challenges of using virtual world technology to hold meetings, events, or collaborate in “mixed” settings, where some people are in a virtual world and others are not.

Potential Benefits

One major benefit I saw to using a virtual world such as Second Life in this way was that people who were unable to attend the meeting in Chicago would be able to attend a session from wherever they happened to be. Second Life attendees could get the same information that those at the meeting received. This could be done through live streaming of the session or by recording it and posting videos later, as well. However, the added benefit of the virtual world in this case, is that the presentation becomes interactive even for those who can’t attend in person. By gathering in the virtual world during the actual session, presenters know who else is attending the session and virtual world attendees have a chance to participate instead of just listen and/or watch. For example, using my virtual world account I could type a chat message to a moderator to ask questions or I could make comments about a particular topic through audio capabilities. Additionally, being in the virtual world space allows attendees to “run into” other people attending the session through the virtual world. Much of the value of conferences and meetings is the informal communication and networking that occurs before and after working sessions. Using a virtual world would give those same communication opportunities to others that can’t attend in person. In fact, the use of Second Life allowed one panelist to join the session and present from another country.

Another potential benefit I saw to using virtual worlds in this way was permanence and the potential to aid collaboration. After a session such as this, an interactive billboard with presentation notes could be left in the virtual world where later visitors could still browse through the materials that were discussed. A virtual notebook could even be left where visitors could add their ideas or comments to discussion materials. Having such materials available longer term could help sessions or meetings extend asynchronously over a longer period of time, giving people time to develop new ideas. It would give events a life outside of the few hours and four walls in which it happened.

Challenges

Despite the potential benefits, there were also some challenges to conducting a session in this way. Most of the challenges that I saw could be put under the umbrella term “technology.”

One challenge was the use of power point slides within Second Life. Although Dr. Schultze did a fantastic job of having everyone’s presentation available and visible at the right moments, it was a lot of work for her. Getting all of the panelists logged on, into the right location, and with proper audio features was also a challenge; most of them had never used Second Life before. With two of us to handle some of the technological components it was still challenging to get everything ready and functioning properly on time. Some of these issues, such as the difficulty with running a power point presentation, are specific to the Second Life platform. However, the general lesson was that the learning curve for effectively using a virtual world is very steep. Presenters and attendees may have negative reactions to having to learn the technology on their own in order to present or attend one event or meeting.

The other challenge I saw was that the interactivity provided by the use of Second Life was not complete. In other words, people at the meeting could see the attendees in Second Life, but not vice-versa. So, while the virtual world provided some opportunities for interaction, it did not fully integrate the two audiences.

Despite the technological challenges faced, I think there were glimpses of real benefits to conducting future events or meetings simultaneously. When the technological challenges can be overcome and virtual worlds become more user friendly these benefits will become more pronounced. Sun Microsystems is already working on a solution to the challenge of bridging the gap between co-located and virtual audiences with their porta-person system.

Has anyone else attended a similar event or session? What was the experience like? Was it beneficial?

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Does Online Identity Matter In Virtual Teams?

Rebecca Jestice — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 18:23:12 +0000

I just returned from the Academy of Management conference in Chicago where I presented a paper that Surinder and I wrote with Professor Rui Huang. Our paper was an extension of the research we have been doing on leadership in virtual worlds that I wrote about previously. This paper focused on how one’s online identity may affect virtual team member perceptions and how virtual teams work together. Specifically, we looked at how one’s online identity affects perceptions of anonymity within the team and how that sense of anonymity affects group cohesion and satisfaction. We find this topic to be interesting and timely as organizations begin to use more online media for collaboration and communication. Organizations have to decide how much and if they are going to set rules or guidelines for how employees present themselves, especially as options for expression expand to the creation of avatars in virtual worlds.

For this study, we had student groups, who did not know the other members in their team, perform a decision making task in either Second Life or instant messaging chat rooms. Intuitively one might guess that people in Second Life would be able to and inclined to create an avatar that closely represents how they are in the real world. In instant messaging, I can only create a user name to project to the other group members, but in Second Life I can manipulate physical attributes of my avatar in order to project myself. However, research has shown that in spaces such as massive multiplayer online games, users will create identities for themselves that are more like their ideal self, or how they imagine their more perfect selves (see this article, e.g.), than identities that reflect how they really are. So, we hypothesized that people in Second Life would actually perceive their online identity in the virtual world as less like their real identity than people in instant messaging. We also hypothesized that if users perceived their online identity to be similar to their real identity, then they would feel that they are able to project who they really are more easily to the group and others can recognize them more easily in the group. In other words, those who had an online identity further from their real identity would perceive themselves as being more anonymous to the other members of their group. Additionally, we expected that when team members perceive themselves as more anonymous to other members in their group, it would be more difficult to build relationships with others and group work will be less satisfying.

Our results indicate that online identities of IM users were perceived to be closer to users’ real identities than online identities of SL users. The more the online identity was perceived as close to one’s real identity, the lower was perceived anonymity of oneself and others. We also found that higher levels of perceived anonymity led to lower levels of perceived cooperation, group cohesion, and satisfaction within the groups. In other words, how closely one’s online identity resembles one’s real identity can influence how team members experience virtual team processes and outcomes in decision-making tasks. The features available for creating one’s identity in a given medium can influence how one creates one’s online identity and how close that identity might resemble one’s real identity. The more choices that are available, the more likely a user is to create an identity that is less like their real self.

Although this is a first step in understanding the role of online identity in group processes in virtual teams, some initial recommendations can be drawn from the study results. These ideas are based on the assumption that the virtual team or collaborators do not know each other well and do not have opportunities to meet face-to-face.

Organizations may want to consider making guidelines in virtual worlds for how much one’s avatar should differ from how one looks in the real world, especially for teams in which the members do not know each other well yet or are not able to meet face-to-face, but must collaborate to finish a task. This may also apply to meeting clients or customers in a virtual world when there is not an established relationship, although this still needs to be tested. If given too much latitude in the creation of online identities in the virtual world, the results could be a lack of group cohesion, trust and satisfaction.
If business is being conducted in a public virtual world such as Second Life, organizations may want to have employees create one identity, close to their real identity, for their work-related interactions and a separate one for using the virtual world for entertainment.
Organizations that are creating their own virtual world platform may want to carefully consider the features available for creating online identities. More features may lead to the creation of online identities further from users’ real identities which might negatively impact team outcomes. Or, if given many features for online identity creation, organizations may want to also provide guidelines to employees.
Team leaders that are bringing virtual teams together may want to consider which medium to use for team meetings and tasks. For teams that are meeting for a short period of time, or that have to work together to solve a problem, fewer available features for manipulating online identity may enhance the ability of the team to feel cohesion in the group.

If you have used a virtual world for collaboration, we would love to hear your experiences and perceptions regarding the impact of identity on your team or work.

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Virtual Worlds: A Potential Tool for Cross-Cultural Training

Rebecca Jestice — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 13:37:46 +0000

Previously, Surinder wrote a blog post on his observations about different cultural expectations and implicit communication patterns. He discussed some ways that virtual team leaders could help limit cultural snafus in teams. As more companies are working with partners around the world and multicultural teams occur more and more often, understanding of cultural differences is important for team members and leaders — for both face-to-face and virtual teams. Companies are purchasing seminars to help educate expatriates and those working in varying cultural contexts. (See this NY Times article about cross-cultural training effectiveness). However, companies are also trying to cut down on costs for training and other “extras”, and some intercultural training methods, such as one-time seminars, can be of limited effectiveness. For these reasons, intercultural training may be an excellent candidate for transfer to virtual world environments.

In this post I discuss social learning theory and how it could be applied to cross-cultural training in virtual worlds. The discussion of social learning theory is based on an article from the Academy of Management Review by J. Stewart Black and Mark Mendenhall.

Social Learning Theory
Social learning theory is the basis for the design of many business trainings used today. It describes how people learn new behaviors through not only their own experiences and the results of those experiences, but also through observing the behaviors and consequences of others. In other words, people can learn behavior modifications from the modeled behaviors of others. In fact, learning through observation of others can be of critical import for socialization and assimilation into new cultures. One study found that people entering a new organization relied most on observing others for learning about their role and the organizational culture and that observation was the most useful method for gathering the appropriate knowledge. Examples of modeled behavior currently used in trainings include watching films or role-plays from which trainees gather information on behaviors and the consequences of those behaviors. Lectures can even serve as a sort of behavioral modeling if connections are drawn between actions and consequences. Social learning theory describes 4 elements necessary for learning:

Attention
The trainee has to pay attention to and notice the behavior that is being modeled. Some factors that influence whether or not the trainee pays attention and how much attention is paid include: the status of the model; the attractiveness of the model; the similarity of the model to the trainee; and the repeated availability of the model.
Retention
The information has to be stored in memory and understood.
Reproduction
The trainee has to be able to reproduce the behavior and check his/her performance against the modeled behavior.
Motivation
There must be some sort of internal or external motivation for the trainee to change his/her behavior, such as the belief that the behavior will lead to better job performance or ease stress in new situations.

Using Virtual Worlds for Cross-Cultural Training
Cross-cultural training in virtual worlds could aid in attention and retention through features that aid immersion. Reproduction can take place multiple times in virtual worlds without the need for trainees to visit a specific place. And motivation could be enhanced through a fun or game-like atmosphere. For example, 3-D immersive spaces can be designed that represent the target culture and avatars that wear clothing worn in the target culture (for example, the Virtual Forbidden City is an immersive replica of the Forbidden City in Beijing, and all the avatars wear clothing historically appropriate to the Forbidden City). Gestures and animations could be used to give appropriate non-verbal communication cues. The use of avatars also allows users to practice appropriate interpersonal distances. Voice communication capabilities would allow for communication in the target language. The training environment could be developed so that multiple users interact in a space at once or “non-playing characters” could be developed to interact with users and help simulate real world encounters.

Based on elements of social learning theory, Black and Mendenhall have offered several propositions for making cross-cultural training effective. Three of these propositions should transfer very well to utilizing virtual worlds and their features for effective training.

The first proposition is that using models similar to the trainee will result in greater attention to the modeled behavior and more effective training. The malleability of identity available through the creation of avatars in virtual worlds should help trainers create avatars that look, and possibly act, similar to the trainee. Or, as suggested by the Proteus Effect, the trainee’s own avatar could be used to show the desired behavior and reinforce it. The Proteus Effect occurs when experiences that take place via an avatar translate into transformed behavior, such as people who watch their avatar exercise are more likely to exercise themselves. Viewing their own avatar should enhance attention to the behavioral modeling and reinforce it through direct experience at the same time.

The second proposition is that modeled behavior that is similar to already familiar behavior is easier to retain and reproduce. Although in cross-cultural training situations, trainees may be learning behaviors that are not readily similar to their own everyday ways of behaving, virtual worlds could help assimilate the new behaviors into more familiar situations that help create mental connections in trainees’ minds. For example, the environment in which the behavior is modeled could be made to resemble a familiar place that brings some level of familiarity to the trainee. After the behavior is modeled in the familiar environment, the environment could then be changed again to one that the trainee is likely to face in the future.

The third proposition is that successive modeling aids retention of the target behavior. Training areas could be set up in a virtual world that allow for multiple interactions over time without the need to travel to a special training area. Behaviors could be practiced with other trainees in different stages and over several times so that the behaviors become gradually more intuitive and reproducible. As mentioned above, this could also be done through the creation of non-playing characters that the trainee interacts with over time. One group at the University of Texas is doing this in order to teach people about Afghani culture. Variations in the characters that are brought to the world each time it is played allow for many iterations and varying circumstances that trainees can learn from. (Article information on this project can be seen here.) The company Alelo is also using this premise to provide cross-cultural and foreign language training for educational organizations and for military organizations.

Cross-cultural training is one promising area for using virtual worlds to deliver efficient training as well as cut costs and resource commitments from organizations. We may see over time that some of the features available in virtual worlds may actually increase the effectiveness of training over traditional seminars. Does anyone have any experience with or know of any other instances of virtual worlds for cross-cultural training? I would love to hear about them.

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Social Presence and Team Satisfaction

Rebecca Jestice — Thu, 07 May 2009 15:52:23 +0000

Surinder and I are currently conducting research on the use of online media such as virtual worlds for education and training. In my readings I came across an interesting article about the perceptions of social presence, or the feeling of being with others in an online environment, and perceived learning and satisfaction in an online course. In this study, researchers measured student perceptions of social presence and perceived learning and satisfaction with an online course and found significant correlations. Students who reported higher perceived social presence also perceived that they learned more than those who perceived lower levels of social presence. Students with higher perceived social presence were also more satisfied with their instructor overall. The limitations of the research and the paper have to be considered when making inferences from these results, such as the fact that we can’t infer causation from correlations, and the fact that all of the data used was perceptual and self-reported by the students. However, I still found the results quite interesting because the researchers looked not only at overall levels of perceived social presence and perceived learning, but also at each of these things based on the learning activity (e.g. discussions, team projects, lectures, written assignments). As might be expected, the correlation between social presence and perceived learning was highest among group oriented activities such as discussion and group projects, but statistically significant correlations were found for all activities, including lectures, notes and readings. It seems to imply that social presence has an impact on the students’ perceived outcomes of the course even for activities that are completed individually.

What might this mean for virtual teams and virtual team leaders? I am careful to make too large a leap from this research to best practices for virtual teams, however, a virtual team working under a leader, may have similar outcomes. That would mean that perceived social presence could have a large impact on team outcomes like satisfaction or perceived learning, especially in situations where the team is trying to understand new concepts or project objectives. This seems to have been a theme throughout some conversations Surinder and I have had with people who use virtual worlds regularly to conduct team meetings. Although the teams might encounter technological issues with using and running a virtual world, many users cite the sense of presence and being with others as one of the benefits of using the virtual world to conduct the majority of team meetings as opposed to other tools available such as a team wiki, instant messaging, or email. It is not realistic at this point for all virtual teams to use virtual worlds all the time, but it might be more important than originally conceived for virtual team leaders to engender a sense of social presence amongst distant team members regardless of the task type. One way that this can be done is to ensure that there is some sort of shared object that team members are working on together. A shared work space can add to social presence as well, such as shared documents stored on a shared group website from which team members can work.

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Second Life’s New Avatar

Rebecca Jestice — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 20:29:17 +0000

Second Life has been in the news again recently. Despite recent changes in upper management and a recent stagnation in new users, the popular virtual world seems to be on an upswing again. Second Life is looking to corporate participation as a key element in their future business (see this CNET article).

When Second Life first came out, businesses jumped in hoping to take advantage of opportunities for marketing, collaboration, and other potential business uses of the virtual world. Now, however, many of the original adopters of Second Life have backed out because of issues that interfered with its successful implementation. Some real issues that businesses face when trying to employ Second Life include the anonymity of users which can leave doubt about with whom one is really talking. Second Life also can’t be put behind a corporate firewall so that confidential communication can take place. Completely “locking down” an entire sim so that stray avatars don’t enter may not be the best business strategy either. Lastly, the endless opportunities for creation of objects and changing one’s appearance can be a distraction in a business setting, as well as reinforce the idea that Second Life is just a game or place for deviant activities–not a place for conducting business.

Second Life is responding to the needs of organizations wanting to use the virtual world for business communication by developing a new server product allowing organizations to run their own Second Life behind a firewall. This will be useful for businesses wanting to use the virtual world for certain types of activities such as conducting meetings or training sessions within the organization. Businesses may still have to consider using the regular Second Life platform, however, for meetings taking place with clients or customers, or for large events.

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Is Virtual Etiquette Different from Real World Etiquette?

Rebecca Jestice — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 18:23:01 +0000

I had an interesting experience recently that reminded me of Surinder’s post on what he sees as some negative trends in email communication, only this experience happened in Second Life. I was visiting an area dedicated to online learning when I ran into another avatar–I’ll call him Mike–who began speaking with me. Mike immediately told me that he was demonstrating Second Life to a class of about 25 students, who were not there in avatar form but I can assume were watching our interaction on a screen. I texted “hi” to the class and informed them that I conduct research on virtual worlds and their use for collaboration and training. Mike proceeded to ask me questions about Second Life and how it is and isn’t useful for student learning. He also asked me about any potential legal or other types of issues that I anticipate or might have already encountered with students. I gave answers from my point of view and current knowledge in hopes of contributing something worthwhile to Mike’s demonstration of Second Life. After about 10 minutes Mike said, “well, we need to move on,” and left.

This situation left me a little disconcerted, and led me to think about what constitutes etiquette in professional or semi-professional interactions between strangers in Second Life or other virtual worlds, or if there is such a thing. Mainly I am left with questions, not answers. I am hoping that others in the leading virtually community will have input regarding how these types of random interactions might be made beneficial to all involved. In this post I will cover:

How much should be disclosed about one’s real situation?
What opportunities for feedback should exist?
Is “thank you” necessary?
Should the rules of engagement from the real world be carried over to the virtual?

I said that the experience left me a little disconcerted because I had spent some of my time and energy to assist Mike in his class demonstration and to give answers to his questions that were as thoughtful as possible though off-the-cuff. Afterward I found that I didn’t feel very satisfied by the experience, however. It was not like meeting a person at a conference and discussing pros and cons of virtual worlds face-to-face and it was not like being invited as a guest speaker into someone’s classroom. I had no verbal or non-verbal feedback. I didn’t even know who I was talking to! I was left wondering what Mike or the students’ reactions were to my answers. Did they agree or disagree? Was I telling them things they already believed or knew, challenging their assumptions, or talking about concepts that they had no interest in? Deliberation over the incident led me to the three questions above regarding virtual world etiquette and norms.

How much should be disclosed about one’s real situation?
In this situation Mike immediately informed me that he was demonstrating Second Life to a class. Therefore I knew immediately that there were other people observing our interaction although I could not see them. He could just have easily begun asking me questions he was interested in without informing me of the presence of the others or his purpose. Had I not known that others were “listening in” would I have felt better about our conversation in the end and assumed it was just a conversation with another person interested in the same subjects?

On the other hand, I was not informed of the type of students that were being given the demonstration and the purpose behind the demonstration. This didn’t give me a chance to tailor my answers to the appropriateness of the situation or the audience. For example, if I had known that the students were masters level students already using Second Life, I could have given answers as a higher level, or had I known it was a demonstration wanting to show the ultimate “uselessness” of Second Life, I could have highlighted ways in which Second Life is beneficial to people. This feeling of uncertainty led me to my next question.

What opportunities for feedback should exist?
My communication with the unknown students was completely mediated by the avatar Mike. I had no way of knowing if the questions were coming directly from Mike or from the students via Mike. I also had no way of knowing if the students found my answers helpful, nonsensical, or somewhere in between. But since I was blind to the reactions of the others, I think that Mike should have shared either critical or supportive feedback from the class regarding the discussion since I had agreed to be an impromptu speaker for the class. Such feedback doesn’t have to be detailed but could be as simple as “they are nodding their heads” or “they disagree with that idea.” This type of feedback shows that the speaker (me) is being listened to and also engages the me in the dialogue as an active participant.

Is “thank you” necessary?
Lastly, my conversation with Mike’s class ended with a “we need to move on,” rather than a “thanks for your time.” This brought me back to Surinder’s post regarding the trend in a lack of a showing of appreciation for work accomplished. This would have been an opportunity to say that the outside insight was beneficial, even if they didn’t agree with me or that they appreciated the effort I took to engage with them. I’m sure that Mike was busy running his class, and I know it can be difficult to run a demonstration of Second Life while also engaging your class, but I know that this type of dismissal wouldn’t happen in a non-virtual environment with a classroom guest.

Should the rules of engagement from the real world carry over to the virtual?
Finally, I’m left with the question of whether we should be conducting ourselves in the virtual world as if we are in the real world when asking others to contribute to our projects, presentations, or inviting speakers in-world to address our teams. My personal opinion is that we need some of these real world social norms to persist in the virtual world in order to maintain positive relationships and reputations. What do you think? I’d love to hear other experiences and opinions.

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Demarginalizing Multiple Identities

Betsy Carroll — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 14:57:59 +0000

I have several email addresses, and I use them each for different purposes. I never receive personal emails on my work account. The account that came with my Internet at home has been sacrificed to spam since I use that account for every website registration. I keep an old email address that’s hardly used just in case someone I haven’t spoken to in 10 years contacts me. So I understand that for different roles I play, I have different email addresses.

This week I came across an advertisement that goes one step further – it suggests that a person should have an email address that their Second Life avatar can take with them into Real Life. LindenPost.com is now offering email accounts that are tailored to people’s double identities in the “real” world and Second Life.

This is compelling because the language of the LindenPost ad is a departure from most of what we read about Second Life. News bites about Second Life tend to sound amused by the popularity of the virtual world, or slightly condescending about the idea of spending significant time in a virtual world with an alternate identity. But avid Second Life users seem to understand that the virtual world gives people the opportunity to express facets of who they are (or would like to be) in a new context. Many Second Life users are not just tinkering around – they are expressing one of their identities. Whether that identity is very similar or very different from their “real” world identity matters very little – an Second Life identity is a valid part of the whole picture of a person.

In a previous post, I talked about managing multiple identities at work. In that post, I had in mind more disparate versions of identities, perhaps those that are forced by the tasks and roles a person has at work and home. The LindenPost ad suggests something more – that it might be good business to respect the voluntary exploration of multiple identities. As more companies, especially non-gaming companies, take avatars seriously, the exploration of multiple identities will become less marginalized.

Why does this matter? I’m not only thinking of the necessity of being respectful of other people’s identities (though I do think that’s important). This may also be crucial to finding new ways of using virtual worlds. Current uses of virtual worlds are fairly limited by what we take for granted in the real world. As Becky recently discussed in a post, we will have to break down assumptions about the real world before fully taking full advantage of what virtual worlds have to offer. Some experts believe the US is losing its competitive advantage of creativity and innovation. If we want to stay competitive in the world, we need to break down old assumptions and find new uses for old and new technologies. For instance, people are beginning to accept that playing video games is not just nonsense, but can teach skills that are useful and desirable in other contexts (see our post on gaming and leadership skills).

This may be quite a conclusion from just the wording of the LindenPost website. But words signal attitudes, and attitudes can influence behaviors. These bigger issues are part of what we have to consider about new technologies such as virtual worlds. And if we want to find truly ground-breaking uses for the new technology of virtual worlds and virtual collaboration, perhaps we have to overcome our underlying assumptions about multiple identities.

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Understanding the Benefits and Uses of Virtual Worlds

Rebecca Jestice — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 01:22:59 +0000

Surinder and I are currently attending the Mardi Gras conference on virtual worlds in Baton Rouge along with our colleague Rui Huang. We are here to present our paper that I discussed in last week’s post and also to hear the exciting work that others are pursuing in and around virtual worlds. I am amazed by the breadth of interests that people have in the area and the innovative research that has been conducted on topics such as education, leadership, e-business, and networking within virtual worlds. One major take away that we have gotten from the conference is that people are still struggling to understand what virtual worlds are and what benefits they can have for both individuals and organizations. The variance in conceptualizations and ideas is fascinating and educational.

One presentation by Tony O’Driscoll of Duke University echoed some of the ideas we discussed in an early post, Time to Think Differently About Virtual Worlds. Tony’s point was that when it comes to virtual worlds, we my be falling into a routinization trap, where we take direct replicas of not only physical environments but ways of doing into the virtual world. An example would be the use of rooms that look just like real world classrooms with avatars giving students power point presentations as a way to use Second Life for teaching. His argument was that we need to literally break down the walls of our thinking about how we can best use virtual worlds to enhance information flows. These same ideas can be translated to virtual teams and breaking virtual meetings out of virtual meeting rooms and finding ways to leverage the unique affordances of virtual worlds.

Christian Wagner of City University of Hong Kong discussed how he uses Second Life to educate his business students studying global business and innovation. Students must form teams, design and execute a business idea that takes advantage of the unique culture of Second Life. The project forces students to learn about teamwork, strategy, marketing, decision making and other important aspects of running an organization. In addition, the built-in economy of Second Life offers a concrete metric for judging the success of the organization–making Lindens. While business simulations or games are not new in educating business leaders, it seems that Dr. Wagner has hit on one other aspect of virtual worlds that make them effective for training–interaction with objective 3rd parties who can give performance feedback through their behavior and choice to interact with you or your business.

The participation and excitement at the conference around many different aspects of and applications for virtual worlds reinforces the notion for us that virtual worlds can be a very useful and innovative tool for many things, including leadership development and team training. The presentations and interesting discussions that arose showed us that if you are still struggling with the best way to take advantage of virtual worlds, you are not alone.

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Supportive and Critical Communication in Virtual Teams

Rebecca Jestice — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 19:56:18 +0000

Effective communication in electronic environments can be vexing to virtual teams. We know intuitively that we need proper communication to achieve high quality and efficient outcomes, but we are not always sure how to best achieve effective communication or even what effective communication is for the task at hand. We have mentioned issues around communication in past posts, such as Betsy’s discussion of the importance of a cooperative mindset and cohesion, Surinder’s post on building social relationships, or my post about the possible value of avatars in virtual world communication. As a research team we are interested in the ability of team members to communicate effectively using computer mediated communication technologies. We conducted some studies looking at the effects of leadership and communication media on the incidence of supportive and critical communication in virtual teams and how the incidence of such communication can effect cohesion, consensus, and group efficacy.

We conducted experiments in which students were formed into ad hoc virtual teams in order to solve a management related problem together. Teams performed their task using either instant messaging or Second Life to communicate with one another and they were led by either a transactional or a transformational confederate. Our goal, in part, was to understand how communication technologies affected the incidence of supportive and critical communication within the team and how communication in turn affected the team’s cohesion, consensus, and efficacy. We examined comments made by team members during their team discussion and identified the occurrence of supportive and critical communication. Supportive communication was defined as that which expressed support for team members’ ideas or position. Critical communication was that in which disagreement with others’ position or ideas was expressed.

Results pointed to a trend of teams with more supportive communication having higher levels of cohesion, post-discussion consensus, and group efficacy, especially when teams were given the opportunity to get to know one another before the task through an ice-breaker exercise. On the other hand, critical communication led to lowered cohesion in the group. The results about the effects of communication media and leadership on the incidence of supportive and critical communication were not as simple or clear. Suffice it to say that Second Life was not associated with higher incidence of supportive communication or lower incidence of critical communication relative to instant messaging.

So what does this mean for a virtual team leader? Our results clearly suggest that increasing supportive communication and reducing critical communication can improve performance of a virtual team. Improve the communication environment by being more supportive and less critical yourself and being a role model for others. Provide team members the opportunity to get to know each other or spend some time building social bonds (see ‘Building Social Relationships in Virtual Teams‘ for ideas). This may help team members understand others’ perspectives better and be more supportive of their ideas. Also help team members express their disagreements in a way that does not harm team performance. Help them phrase their point not as a simple contradiction or disagreement, but rather by being supportive and offering a counterpoint or alternative — this will help the team function better.

We will be presenting the results of our study next week at the Mardi Gras conference in Baton Rouge. This year’s conference will focus on virtual worlds. If you’ll be there, please look us up!

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