A project management perspective on student's declarative commitments to goals established within asynchronous communication.
Teamwork and technology, even as people are seeing their increased use in organizations, are becoming important components of problem-based learning in academic settings. Yet, fostering computer-assisted teamwork is complex and time consuming. Knowing how and when to intervene would prove useful. Th...
| Published in: | Journal of Computer Assisted Learning Vol. 25; no. 3; pp. 294 - 306 |
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| Main Authors: | , |
| Format: | research tables/charts Journal Article |
| Published: |
Wiley-Blackwell
Jun2009
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| Online Access: | View this record in EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ccm&AN=105343608&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: ccm uiTerm: 105343608 longDbName: CINAHL Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: dissinfo: jinfo: jid: 02664909 6M1 jtl: Journal of Computer Assisted Learning issn: 02664909 maglogo: Y pubinfo: dt: Jun2009 vid: 25 iid: 3 pid: 480 pub: Wiley-Blackwell place: Malden, Massachusetts artinfo: ui: 105343608 2010457806 10.1111/j.1365-2729.2009.00310.x 105343608 ppf: 294 ppct: 12 formats: tig: atl: A project management perspective on student's declarative commitments to goals established within asynchronous communication. aug: au: Chiocchio F Lafrenière A affil: Département de Psychologie, Université de Montréal, C.P. 6128 Succ. Centre-ville, Montréal, Québec, Canada. Email: f.chiocchio@umontreal.ca sug: subj: Electronic Bulletin Boards Utilization Goal-Setting Psychology Education Teamwork Adult Collaboration Content Analysis Education, Baccalaureate Multivariate Analysis of Variance Outcomes of Education Teachers Teaching Methods Human Adult: 19-44 years ab: Teamwork and technology, even as people are seeing their increased use in organizations, are becoming important components of problem-based learning in academic settings. Yet, fostering computer-assisted teamwork is complex and time consuming. Knowing how and when to intervene would prove useful. This study draws from the field of project management to explore how students commit to project goals using collective asynchronous text-based communication technology. Declarative commitments - goal-orientated public, voluntary, explicit and non-retractable messages comprised of a term, an objective and a focus - made by 34 teams during a four-phase 13-week project were analysed qualitatively and quantitatively. Qualitative results show that declarative commitments voluntarily and formally package information about project constraints into a relatively potent message about tasks, coordination and project completion. Team members' suggestions as to what should be carried out in the project and requests for help often preceded others' declarative commitments. As with persuasive communication (i.e. aimed at changing beliefs, attitudes and behaviours), declarative commitments were followed by demands for clarification, new declarative commitments, confirmations of upheld commitments and clear approvals of what was committed to. Looking at project progression from a broader perspective, quantitative analyses show that declarative commitments did partially mediate the relationship between frequencies of task issues and of task solutions. This was particularly pronounced in the mid-point of the project, but it was not the case during the initial or final phases of the project. Taken together, these results suggest that teachers can facilitate computer-assisted learning and project goal attainment by monitoring asynchronous electronic discussions, and by eliciting and structuring declarative commitments. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: research tables/charts Journal Article ougenre: Article language: English refInfo: holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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