A cyber-icebreaker for an effective virtual group?

Abstract

This paper reports selected results from the most recent of a series of international collaborative trials between students at Auckland University of Technology and Uppsala University. The trials require students to work together in virtual groups, comprising students from each institution, to perform a common task. The topic of this paper is how to form and sustain more effective virtual groups. In this trial a cyber-icebreaker task has been introduced and its contribution to group effectiveness is explored. Some conclusions are drawn pinpointing the strengths and weaknesses of this trial design, and some insights into effective design of electronic collaborative learning groups are gained.

Assessing the application of three-dimensional collaborative technologies within an e-learning environment

“…This is a standard technique employed to make people feel comfortable with new people and prepare them to interact. It is extensively used within the area of business-training and has also been more recently extended to the online domain (Clear & Daniels, 2001). We chose to use the classic game: 'Who am I? '…”

Team Perceived Trustworthiness in a Complex Military Peacekeeping Simulation

“…A social icebreaker session was used in the training protocol in this research, in order to allow members to get to know each other and to teach them communication protocol. Scholars (Clear & Daniels, 2001;Hinds & Bailey, 2003) have suggested that using social icebreakers especially for distributed teams can be an effective substitute for face-to-face touch and allows teams to develop TEAM TRUST trust. Because we did not investigate social icebreaking as an independent variable in this study, we cannot speculate as to whether the initial trust building exercises minimized context effects in terms of trust behaviors.…”

Facilitating student learning through study abroad and international projects

“…These collaborative projects may be limited to online interactions or may include faceto-face contacts. Examples of these have been reported at ITiCSE Conferences in recent years [2,6], and one is described as a case study in section 3.3.1 of this report. They demonstrate that, while joint projects can give students an experience of the benefits and problems of international collaboration, they provide a very limited opportunity to confront and cope with language and cultural barriers [2].…”