Tools for distributed facilitation

McQuaid, Michael; Briggs, Robert O.; Gillman, Duffy; Hauck, R.; Lin, Chienting; Mittleman, Daniel; Nunamaker, Jay F.; Ramsey, Marshall; Romano, Nicholas C.

doi:10.1109/hicss.2000.926626

Cited by 15 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…The main objective of facilitating tools is to manage the meetings, to improve the quality of outputs (Bubs and Hayne 1992; Niederman and Volkema 1999;McQaid et al 2000;Briggs et al 2001). In this regard, distributed facilitation techniques are a necessity because many of the conventional techniques of group facilitation, essentially the face-to-face facilitation techniques, are no longer effective in a distributed environment and are deeply rooted on measures that require line of sight between the facilitator and the meeting participants.…”

Section: Facilitating Distributed Meetingsmentioning

confidence: 98%

A Proposal of Toolkit for GDSS Facilitators

2010

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Most group decision meetings are perceived to be extremely unproductive in terms of efficiently utilizing the participants' time and effectively achieving the group decision meeting objectives. Indeed, group decision meetings consume a great deal of time and effort in organizations. These problems occur frequently because effective guidelines or procedures are not used. To overcome these problems, many group decision support systems (GDSS) imbed some facilitation mechanisms and are currently being used with the help of a human facilitator who guides the group members through the decision process. We propose in this paper a toolkit for GDSS facilitators that we integrate in our proposed architecture for distributed GDSS. Based on a model of the decision making processes group facilitation tasks are automated, at least partially in order to increase the ability of inexperienced facilitator to monitor and control the group decision meeting process.

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Section: Facilitating Distributed Meetingsmentioning

confidence: 98%

A Proposal of Toolkit for GDSS Facilitators

2010

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“…Furthermore, especially consensus building, a key democratic process, is a highly demanding facilitation task (den Hengst & Adkins, 2007). One of the key challenges in this setting is the lack of non-verbal feedback (body language) for the facilitator (McQuaid et al, 2000;Niederman, Beise, & Beranek, 1993;Romano et al, 1999). Without this cue it is difficult to assess engagement of the students, and to detect signs of conflict or flaming (Reinig, Briggs, & Nunamaker, 1998) or to interpret silence (Ter Bush & Mittleman, 2006).…”

Section: Challenges Of Online Communicationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Without this cue it is difficult to assess engagement of the students, and to detect signs of conflict or flaming (Reinig, Briggs, & Nunamaker, 1998) or to interpret silence (Ter Bush & Mittleman, 2006). Another challenge is that the communication channel for discussion and for process instructions and non-content related remarks of the students should be separated (McQuaid et al, 2000;Niederman, Beise, & Beranek, 1993;Romano et al, 1999). When instructions or feedback are mixed with content, they are easily overlooked.…”

Section: Challenges Of Online Communicationmentioning

confidence: 99%

A toolbox for democratic and participatory methods in education

Kolfschoten

2012

Future Learning

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With the trends in the use of social software and social media, a more informal and democratic online culture is developing, especially in younger generations. This culture is increasingly conflicting with traditional teaching styles. One of these trends involves the introduction of more democratic and participatory interaction styles in daily activities, online and for larger communities. E-democracy tools and methods could be an important means to facilitate e-democracy in traditional education. However, e-democracy poses a number of challenges, which require careful consideration when implementing a democratic process. One of the disciplines that can offer solutions to these challenges is the facilitation of group and collaboration processes with the use of Group Support Systems. A recent development in this area of research is the use of design patterns to document techniques for collaboration. In this paper we present a set of design patterns for the facilitation of e-democracy, that can be used in traditional education.

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“…As the Internet and other network-enabling technology expanded, these GDSS and EMS tools were expanded to handle geographically distributed participants leading very recently to research in distributed facilitation (eg. McQuaid et al, 2000;Qureshi et al, 2000). Distributed facilitation is similar to collocated facilitation in that the facilitator's role is still one of mediating communication interaction and facilitating decision making, but also very different in that now the facilitator must do so with participants who cannot see each other and who may not know each other.…”

Section: Virtual Team Facilitators As Technology-use Mediatorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Grounded Theory of Virtual Facilitation: Building Relationships with Virtual Team Members

Pauleen¹

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<p>The purpose of this study was to develop a deeper understanding of the issues facing virtual team facilitators as they implement and facilitate virtual teams. The study asked the following research question: How do facilitators of virtual teams build relationships with their virtual team members? Because virtual teams are a new form of highly dynamic and ambiguous collaborative interaction, a major challenge of this study was the need to generate relevant data and analyze it in an appropriate manner. To achieve this, a research framework involving a training program format was instituted based on methods developed in Action Learning (AL), with data collection and analysis based on grounded theory approaches (Glaser and Strauss, 1967). The AL-based 'virtual team facilitation' training program used in this study was designed to achieve the following three goals: to generate interest and incentive for would-be participants, to give participants information and skills to initiate and facilitate their own virtual teams, and to generate data for analysis. After being recruited, participants were broadly interviewed to determine their prior experience with virtual teams and their perceived needs and concerns in implementing and facilitating their own virtual team. The researcher then developed a ten-week training program to meet these needs. A pilot program and two subsequent training programs were held. During the training programs, each participant planned for, or actually initiated and facilitated a virtual team within their own organizational context. Every two weeks the participants met with the researcher to investigate issues related to initiating and facilitating virtual teams and to discuss issues that were arising in their own virtual teams. In all seven participants from a variety of New Zealand organizations took part in the study. The seven participants formed a diverse group, from the managing director of a one-man, global virtual organization who worked exclusively in global virtual team settings to a self-employed consultant managing a local virtual work team. The participants were in various stages of their virtual team lifecycle, from planning through initiation to full-scale facilitation and evaluation of a just-completed virtual team project. The participants' virtual team project tasks ranged from managing a political campaign on the other side of the world to developing and running a national web-based academic assessment center. A unique feature of this study is that it involves organizational professionals as opposed to students. Data was collected from face-to-face and telephone interviews, group discussions and e-mail correspondences. Data collection extended to several months beyond the end of the training sessions. Using grounded theory techniques, the data was analyzed using "a general method of (constant) comparative analysis". Data was collected and coded simultaneously over the course of the training sessions, with subsequent coding confirming, refining, extending and modify the data. The data showed very clearly that the facilitators considered it essential to build some level of personal relationship with their virtual team members before commencing a virtual working relationship. Further, a unifying framework of three inter-related theoretical steps in the overall process a virtual facilitator goes through when building relationships with virtual team members was inductively derived from this study. These three steps are Assessing Conditions, Choosing Level of Relationship, and Creating Strategies. This study is the first to identify the steps a virtual team facilitator undertakes when building relationships with virtual team members. It has implications for virtual team practice, research and training.</p>

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Tools for distributed facilitation

Cited by 15 publications

References 2 publications

A Proposal of Toolkit for GDSS Facilitators

A Proposal of Toolkit for GDSS Facilitators

A toolbox for democratic and participatory methods in education

A Grounded Theory of Virtual Facilitation: Building Relationships with Virtual Team Members

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