On Technologically-Mediated Communication & Productivity

Team Leaders' Technology Choice in Virtual Teams

This was an interesting study by Anu Sivunen and Maarit Valo that explored the pros and cons of various technologies available for use with virtual teams. This in-depth, ethnographic exploration of Finnish virtual team leaders examined their choices of communications technologies in daily work, breaking their decision down into four factors, two of them person-related and two task-related. The person-related factors were accessibility or ease of member access through a particular medium, and social distance between members. The two task-related factors were idea sharing or ease of members ability to share ideas, and informing or team leaders ability to share and document information based on the nature of the task (58).

In essence, the study looked to determine what influences communication technology choice to optimally facilitate and support communication between virtual team members. In short, it found landlines, voicemail, and email the most popular conferencing medium and videoconferencing, shared databases, and IM less often used. As an example, the study found videoconferencing not that prevalent because the ability to see the other party rarely adds value to communication in the majority of working contexts while email was popular due to its ubiquity and ease of use.

The study looked at the principle determinants of team leader choice (61) which were based upon:

1. Rational technology, or which technology is chosen that will suit the task best? 

2. Social influence, or which technology is impacted by co-workers' preference? 

3. Adaptive structuration, or which technology choice is a product of the particular culture using it?

Study conclusions found that accessibility was important due to increased mobility of members and whether they had access to the particular medium and were reachable through it. Findings (65) concluded that the characteristics of the situation determined media choice and most important were distance between members, time pressure of the project, and as stated earlier, accessibility of the technology to members. Ultimately, it comes down to the nature of the task at hand, characteristics of the technology, and the team members' ability to access and use it. This study does a good job of proving this.

Mediated Immediacy:

A language of affiliation in a technological age

In this study by Patrick B. O'Sullivan, Stephan K. Hunt, and Lance R. Lippert, the authors remark that accompanying the diffusion of social technology in teaching, important problems in student reactions, notably low student involvement and motivation, and increased isolation have occurred. Despite the promise of new communication technologies to improve teaching and learning, progress in developing well-informed, appropriate, and effective applications of technology has been slow and inconsistent, the authors contend (485).

An ongoing problem with computer mediated communication (CMC) is the lack of non-verbal signals that typically accompany traditional classroom learning environments and that if these important social cues are lost, often times, emotional connectedness seems to be lost as well. The result? In most cases, ineffective or non-existent learning.

Mediated immediacy refers to communicative behaviors that reduce the physical or psychological distance between individuals and foster affiliation between them. The authors state (469) that immediacy can be encouraged through an "approach and avoidance" construct - that people approach things they like and avoid things they don't - as a way to better understand the communicative practices that convey affiliation and foster relationships with communication technologies that can achieve a positive outcome.

The authors point out (470) that research has demonstrated students learn most from teachers who are warm, friendly, immediate, approachable, and fostering of close, professionally appropriate personal relationships. Use of immediacy is an important element of this. Mediated immediacy, according to the authors, are communicative cues that can help shape perceptions of psychological closeness and help promote appropriate educational intimacy with students to reduce anxiety and uncertainty and improve attitudes towards the instructor and course. 

In this vein, important mediated immediacy cues were found to be those that promoted instructor approachability and his/her regard for students. The study found that these cues can be both linguistic and presentational. Linguistic cues incorporated into written course content can include informality, self-disclosure, politeness and a friendly, conversational tone to the voice of the content. This bodes well for their integration into text-based technologies such as email, chat rooms, and web pages, assuming of course, that students are appropriately engaged with the content. Presentational cues are more graphical in nature and can include the use of color, the instructor's photo, and a sense of informality in material design, notably, but not limited to web sites.

Study results generally supported the hypothesis that incorporating multiple immediacy cues produced both lower uncertainty and increased motivation towards the instructor and course by study participants. Further, the study determined that using more cues didn't produce significantly lower levels of anxiety, although this relationship was in the predicted direction.

This is an interesting study. As a college instructor in the process of repurposing my course to be delivered as more of a blended hybrid, it provides me with some good implications for incorporating appropriate mediated immediacy cues in writing and designing CMC course materials with sensitivity towards student anxiety and related decreased motivation. One point that will always be a challenge is determining with a good degree of accuracy, those who have issues and those that don't. Often times, this isn't readily apparent with students until unfortunately, much time and educational opportunity has passed.