Jama Denae Summers

The Impact of Virtual Team Consistency on Individual Performance and Perceptual Outcomes Over Time

This research examines how the provision of virtual team membership consistency may impact perceptions of the communication technology and interactions as well as performance. The results from a repeated measures experiment finds that virtual teams with expectations of inconsistency in membership have a more negative perception of the supporting technology, and perceive less coordination than consistent teams. Additionally, members on consistent teams perceive less interpersonal conflict, greater coordination, and enjoy greater performance outcomes. Virtual team consistency is an important construct that can provide insights to virtual team member concerns regarding team turnover and loss of social capital due to turnover. Given the ephemeral nature of virtual team membership, consistency may be a key construct for consideration in overcoming delay in virtual team engagement and social identity development.

Playing ‘catch up’ with blended learning: performance impacts of augmenting classroom instruction with online learning

ABSTRACT This study examines the efficacy of blended learning – an approach that combines in-class and online methods in a way that leverages the strengths of both – using a field experiment spanning 16 weeks. An information-processing model of learning suggests that learners will weigh the cost of information accessibility against its value in ways that will impact their interactions with the available information sources, which will consequently affect learning outcomes. Results of our study suggest that such an assessment did indeed occur and that it impacted learning performance. Specifically, our results support the idea that providing high-value content in both settings – the classroom (rich, yet high cost) and online (efficient, yet low cost), enhances performance. The largest gains in performance were seen by those who used the blended learning system the most, with the lowest gains by those who did not use the system at all (i.e. the control group).