Morgan M. Shepherd

Invoking social comparison to improve electronic brainstorming: beyond anonymity

This paper presents a study of electronic brainstorming (EBS) that begins with theory building, tool development, and experimentation, and ends with practical guidance for facilitators and developers. The paper argues that social loafing impairs the productivity of EBS groups, and that social comparison is a way to decrease the effect(s) of social loafing. The literature on brainstorming productivity suggests that there is a correlation between the quantity of ideas produced and the number of high-quality ideas produced. By inducing social comparison with a graphical feedback tool and increasing the salience of that social comparison with facilitation techniques, we increased the productivity of EBS groups by 63 percent.

Affective reward and the adoption of group support systems: productivity is not always enough

Research shows that group support systems (GSS) have dramatically increased group productivity. However, researchers in the field discovered that users sometimes find themselves feeling emotionally unfulfilled despite exceptionally good results; users report a loss of the affective reward often associated with a challenging meeting where they struggle and succeed. This lack of engagement has been shown to be a cause of user resistance to adopting GSS technology. Team effectiveness may be reduced over time as users seek less-effective but more-gratifying alternatives. This paper frames affective reward as a function of excitation transfer. It describes the development and validation of an instrument to measure affective reward, and presents the results of the first laboratory investigation of the construct.

Collaborative Technology in the Classroom: A Review of the GSS Research and a Research Framework

Over the past several years, a number of research studies have investigated the application of group support system (GSS) technology to the classroom. The purpose of this paper is twofold: (1) to summarize and assess what has been learned from this emerging body of research, and (2) to draw on the GSS and cooperative learning literatures to construct a framework to guide future studies. The review of research studies reported in this paper focuses on comparative studies investigating the synchronous GSS classroom environment. While research findings regarding the impacts of GSS on learning performance are somewhat mixed, early indications are encouraging and suggest that GSS may have a positive impact under certain situations. A framework based on the GSS and cooperative learning research is introduced that identifies the contextual, group process, and outcome factors that researchers may wish to consider when designing and interpreting future research studies in this area.

Testing for the Transfer of Tacit Knowledge: Making a Case for Implicit Learning

Companies are beginning to realize that simply storing data in warehouses and databases is not sufficient to ensure the usefulness of that data or information. As information is processed with a purpose (Ackoff & Emery, 1972), it becomes knowledge. Knowledge exists on many planes; one is the tacit-explicit plane described by Polanyi (1966). Knowledge-based applications are becoming a key factor in determining organizational value. For example, Activity-Based Costing (ABC) and Knowledge Value Added (KVA) are two methodologies that organizations use to measure explicit knowledge. However, this interest in measuring and managing knowledge creates two important questions. First, do companies include tacit knowledge in their measurements of knowledge? Second, can educators demonstrate that they are helping increase tacit knowledge? This paper posits that companies may not be including the full range of knowledge in their endeavor to measure knowledge in their organizations. To help make a case for including tacit knowledge and implicit learning, an active learning exercise is created to demonstrate a method to quantify and test for changes in both types of knowledge. The results show that the activity created observable changes in explicit and tacit knowledge. Future research will need to concentrate further on understanding how the two types of knowledge interact. For now though, these results demonstrate one way to observe the two types of knowledge and more importantly, point out the need for organizations to find ways to value both implicit and explicit knowledge.

Media Richness Theory and the Distance Education Environment

Distance learning is becoming an increasingly popular delivery option for education. Course management platforms (CMP) are the main technological delivery mechanisms for the distance learning courses. CMPs include an abundance of functions by which to communicate and run a distance class. As such, these technologies provide an excellent environment to test the implications of Media Richness Theory (MRT). Based upon a review of “interaction” theories, this paper formulates three conjectures based upon the media richness used in the CMP. The accuracy of these conjectures is tested using a set of data collected from subjects in an established distance education program. The results of this research study show that the richer the distance education environment, the higher the reported satisfaction with the distance course/program, the more reported communication among students/faculty, and the higher the valuation of the course delivery platform by the users.

Managing Distance Education for Success

By 2006, the distance education industry is predicted to be well beyond

Group consensus: do we know it when we see it?

33.6 billion (Merit Education, 2003). As with most markets, one of the keys to taking advantage of this growing market is customer satisfaction. Therefore, the greater the student satisfaction in a distance pro-gram, the more likely that program will be successful. This article identifies five key components of satisfaction for distance education programs. First, a viable list of potential indicators for student satisfaction is developed from the previous research that compares traditional education environments to distance education environments. A questionnaire was developed using these variables and administered to 341 distance students. The results revealed five constructs for student satisfaction in a distance education program (Martz & Reddy, 2005). Using these factors as guidance, this paper extends those findings to provide some operational and administrative implications.

The Influence of Media Factors on Ethical Behavior

The issue of consensus is unclear in technology-supported meetings. Research indicates that technology supported groups have less consensus than face-to-face groups, and that it is the technology that is at least partly to blame for the non-consensus process loss. This paper reports on an experiment that addresses the issue of how well individuals understand consensus. The results show overwhelmingly that individuals neither agree on what consensus looks like nor do they apply a consistent interpretation of consensus. In addition, the lack of consensus in technology-supported groups may not be due to the technology at all, but rather to the incorrect assumption that individuals know consensus when they see it.

A Survey of Distance Education Programs

As the number of scandals in the business world continue, there seems to be a greater need for ethics training This study looks at some of the known characteristics of information, and the influence those characteristics have on students when it comes to ethical behavior. Mason developed the PAPA ethics categories, and this study examines the Property category in depth. A set of scenarios was developed around three main constructs: the costs of a product (free or not); the type of product (an MP3 file vs. a test); the medium of a product (digital format or tangible); and the ownership perspective (owned by a friend or owned by the subject). The overall results show students are lacking in ethics, and that there is a difference in ethical behavior when MP3 files are studied

Designing a distance education program: the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs

According to Martin and Samels (Martin & Samels, 1995), distance education is one of the least understood areas of technological change in higher education today. The constant improvement in technology, the rapidly changing student demographics, the constant demand for better educated students, the need for more Information Technology (IT) professionals, and the lack of more universally accepted definitions and learning models have all created a wealth of opportunities in this field. One of the challenges for researchers in this field is finding an accepted definition for “distance education.” For some (Keegan, 1986; Verduin & Clark, 1991), distance education takes place whenever the instructor and student are physically distant from each other. Others (Baird & Monson, 1992) require