Abstract
There is an increased demand for a skilled workforce that is prepared for work in today’s digital economy, which is often done in virtual teams. Thus, while many students today have little or no experience working in this mode, they are often placed in virtual teams early in their careers. We argue that that if students have the opportunity to acquire virtual leadership skills in an authentic setting in their undergraduate program, they will be more prepared when they are placed in virtual teams and virtual leadership roles in the workplace. An instructional strategy was implemented in a large online undergraduate business course to provide students with the experience of working in virtual teams in an authentic setting and the findings of the study highlight the importance of organization, technology management, communication, managing student perceptions, and coaching when using this strategy to teach virtual leadership and virtual team skills.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Allen, I. E., Seaman, J., Poulin, R., & Straut, T. T. (2016). Online report card: Tracking online education in the United States. Sloan Consortium, 1–4. Retrieved from http://onlinelearningsurvey.com/reports/onlinereportcard.pdf
Berry, G. R. (2011). Enhancing effectiveness on virtual teams: Understanding why traditional team skills are insufficient. The Journal of Business Communication, 48(2), 186–206. https://doi.org/10.1177/0021943610397270.
Bowen, G. A. (2009). Document analysis as a qualitative research method. Qualitative Research Journal, 9(2), 27–40.
Bowen, W. G., Chingos, M. M., Lack, K. A., & Nygren, T. I. (2014). Interactive learning online at public universities: Evidence from a six-campus randomized trial. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 33(1), 94–111.
Brewer, P. E., Mitchell, A., Sanders, R., Wallace, P., & Wood, D. D. (2015). Teaching and learning in cross-disciplinary virtual teams. IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, 58(2), 208–229.
Brown, J. S., Collins, A., & Duguid, P. (1989). Situated cognition and the culture of learning. Educational Researcher, 18(1), 32–42.
DuFrene, D. D., & Lehman, C. M. (2015). Managing virtual teams. New York, NY: Business Expert Press.
Elo, S., & Kyngäs, H. (2008). The qualitative content analysis process. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 62(1), 107–115.
Fan, K. T., Chen, Y. H., Wang, C. W., & Chen, M. (2014). E-leadership effectiveness in virtual teams: Motivating language perspective. Industrial Management & Data Systems, 114(3), 421–437.
Ferns, S. (2012). Graduate employability: Teaching staff, employer and graduate perceptions, Proceedings of The Australian Collaborative Education Network (ACEN) National Conference. Geelong, Australia: Deakin University.
Fraenkel, J. R., Wallen, N. E., & Hyun, H. H. (2011). How to design and evaluate research in education. NY, New York: McGraw-Hill Humanities/Social Sciences/Languages.
Gilson, L. L., Maynard, M. T., & Bergiel, E. B. (2013). Virtual team effectiveness: An experiential activity. Small Group Research, 44(4), 412–427.
Gilson, L. L., Maynard, M. T., Young, N. C. J., & Vartiainen, M. (2015). Virtual teams research : 10 years, 10 themes, and 10 opportunities. Journal of Management, 41(5), 1313–1337. https://doi.org/10.1177/0149206314559946.
Goold, A., Augar, N., & Farmer, J. (2006). Learning in virtual teams: Exploring the student experience. Journal of Information Technology Education Research, 5, 477–490.
Green, J., Skukauskaite, A., Dixon, C., & Córdova, R. (2007). Epistemological issues in the analysis of video records: Interactional ethnography as a logic of inquiry in Goldman, Pea, Barron, Denny (Eds.), Video Research in the Learning Sciences (pp. 115–132). New York: Routledge.
Guest, G., Bunce, A., & Johnson, L. (2006). How many interviews are enough? An experiment with data saturation and variability. Field Methods, 18(1), 59–82.
Haidet, K. K., Tate, J., Divirgilio-Thomas, D., Kolanowski, A., & Happ, M. B. (2009). Methods to improve reliability of video-recorded behavioral data. Research in Nursing & Health, 32(4), 465–474.
Herrington, J. (2006). Authentic e-learning in higher education: Design principles for authentic learning environments and tasks. In E-Learn: World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare, and Higher Education (pp. 3164-3173). Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE).
Herrington, J., & Herrington, A. (2008). Authentic learning environments. In Handbook of research on educational communications and technology (pp. 401–412). New York: Springer.
Herrington, J., & Oliver, R. (1995). Critical characteristics of situated learning: Implications for the instructional design of multimedia. In Proceedings of ASCILITE 95 conference. 253-262.
Hoch, J. E., & Kozlowski, S. W. (2014). Leading virtual teams: Hierarchical leadership, structural supports, and shared team leadership. Journal of Applied Psychology, 99(3), 390.
Kalisch, B. J., Xie, B., & Ronis, D. L. (2013). Train-the-trainer intervention to increase nursing teamwork and decrease missed nursing care in acute care patient units. Nursing Research, 62(6), 405–413.
Kumar, A., Kumar, P., Palvia, S. C. J., & Verma, S. (2017). Online education worldwide: Current status and emerging trends. Journal of Information Technology Case and Application Research, 19(1), 3–9. https://doi.org/10.1080/15228053.2017.1294867.
Levy, K., Hirsch, E. F., Aghababian, R. V., Segall, A., & Vanderschmidt, H. (1999). Radiation accident preparedness: Report of a training program involving the United States, Eastern Europe; and the newly independent states. American Journal of Public Health, 89(7), 1115.
Lincoln, Y. S., & Guba, E. G. (1985). Naturalistic inquiry. Thousand Oaks: Sage.
Lombardi, M. M. (2008). Making the grade: The role of assessment in authentic learning. EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative, 1–16.
Lowenthal, P. R., Nyland, R., Jung, E., Dunlap, J. C., & Kepka, J. (2019). Does class size matter? An exploration into faculty perceptions of teaching high-enrollment online courses. American Journal of Distance Education, 33(3).
Maynard, M. T., Mathieu, J. E., Rapp, T. L., & Gilson, L. L. (2012). Something (s) old and something (s) new: Modeling drivers of global virtual team effectiveness. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 33(3), 342–365.
McCutcheon, D. M., & Meredith, J. R. (1993). Conducting case study research in operations management. Journal of Operations Management, 11(3), 239–256.
Merriam, S. B., & Tisdell, E. J. (2016). Qualitative research: A guide to design and implementation (pp.179-180). San Francisco, CA:Jossey-bass.
Miles, M. B., Huberman, A. M., & Saldaña, J. (2014). Qualitative data analysis: A methods sourcebook (3rd.) (pp.79). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Morgan, L., Paucar-Caceres, A., & Wright, G. (2014). Leading effective global virtual teams: The consequences of methods of communication. Systemic Practice and Action Research, 27(6), 607–624.
Oliver, R., & Herrington, J. (2000). Using situated learning as a design strategy for web-based learning. In Instructional and Cognitive Impacts of Web-Based Education (pp. 178-191). IGI global.
Pancucci, S. (2007). Train the trainer: The bricks in the learning community scaffold of professional development. International Journal of Social Sciences, 2(1), 14–20.
Rath, V., Gunter, G., & Braga, J. D. C. F. (2010). Strategies for enhancing student engagement in large online classes. In E-Learn: World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare, and Higher Education (pp. 770-775). Association for the Advancement of computing in Education (AACE).
Ruhleder, K., & Jordan, B. (1997). Capturing complex, distributed activities: Video-based inter-action analysis as a component of workplace ethnography. In A. S. Lee, J. Liebenaur, & J. I DeGross (Eds.), Information systems and qualitative research (pp. 246–275). Philadelphia, PA: Springer.
Schmidt, G. B. (2014). Virtual leadership: An important leadership context. Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 7(2), 182–187.
Seaman, J. E., Allen, I. E., & Seaman, J. (2018). Grade increase: Tracking distance education in the United States. In Babson research group Retrieved from http://www.onlinelearningsurvey.com/highered.html.
Smith, W., Butcher, E., Litvin, S. W., & Frash, R. (2015). Incorporating an instructional scaffolding approach into the classroom: Teaching for authentic learning in hospitality and tourism education. Journal of Teaching in Travel & Tourism, 15(3), 264–277.
Society for Human Resource Management (2012). Virtual teams. Retrieved from http://www.shrm.org/research/surveyfindings/articles/pages/virtualteams.aspx
Tobias, C. R., Downes, A., Eddens, S., & Ruiz, J. (2012). Building blocks for peer success: Lessons learned from a train-the-trainer program. AIDS Patient Care and STDs, 26(1), 53–59. https://doi.org/10.1089/apc.2011.0224.
Trammell, B. A., & LaForge, C. (2017). Common challenges for instructors in large online courses: Strategies to mitigate student and instructor frustration. Journal of Educators Online, 14(1), 1–10.
Vo, N., Brodsky, A., Wilks, M., Goodner, J., & Christopher, K. (2018). Infusing authentic learning into online courses: A case of online introduction to sociology. Journal of Educational Multimedia and Hypermedia, 27(3), 391–409.
Wisneski, J. E., Ozogul, G., & Bichelmeyer, B. A. (2017). Investigating the impact of learning environments on undergraduate students' academic performance in a prerequisite and post-requisite course sequence. The Internet and Higher Education, 32, 1–10.
Wituk, S., Ealey, S., Clark, M. J., Heiny, P., & Meissen, G. (2005). Community development through community leadership programs: Insights from a statewide community leadership initiative. Community Development, 36(2), 89–101.
Yarber, L., Brownson, C. A., Jacob, R. R., Baker, E. A., Jones, E., Baumann, C., et al. (2015). Evaluating a train-the-trainer approach for improving capacity for evidence-based decision making in public health. BMC Health Services Research, 15(1), 547.
Yin, R. K. (2017). Case study research and applications: Design and methods. Thousand Oaks: Sage.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher’s Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Appendix
Appendix
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Loucks, S., Ozogul, G. Preparing Business Students for a Distributed Workforce and Global Business Environment: Gaining Virtual Leadership Skills in an Authentic Context. TechTrends 64, 655–665 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11528-020-00513-4
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11528-020-00513-4