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Part 1
Managing Virtual TeamsProduction of Vanilla â Agricultural Systems and Curing
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Chapter 1
Building Virtual Teams1
Edward Volchok
Every instructor who teaches online should consider introducing team projects. While they are especially useful in marketing, virtual teams are a very effective educational tool in all disciplines. When Stevens Institute of Technology asked me to develop an online graduate marketing course, I was certain of one thing: I wanted to give my students an experience that would instill a deep appreciation of marketing and the challenges marketers face. To achieve my goalâto be truly hands-onâI knew I would have to assign team projects. The looming question was: How should I structure teams in a computer-mediated, asynchronous learning environment?
The online environment presents unique challenges, especially for team projects. Online, students and faculty lack a face-to-face connection on which we all depend in on-campus classes. Its importance cannot be understated. Without 30 hours of physical presence in a traditional classroom, students can feel isolated from their instructor as well as from one another. Online relationshipsâbuilt primarily by communicating with the written word, without benefit of body language, a passing smile, or an occasional jokeâcan seem hollow. The lack of these cues makes building trust very difficult. The wise use of virtual teams, however, can help overcome virtual distance.
Since early 2002, I have been teaching âMarketing Management,â an online graduate course in Stevens Institute of Technology e-learning unit. From the start, I formed virtual teams. Having seen the triumphs and tribulations of over 75 teams on some 300 team projects in 20 classes, I will discuss some of the methods I useâand that you might also employâto make your virtual teams succeed.
Structuring Online Classes
My primary task was to migrate the school's âMarketing Managementâ course from the classroom to the online environment. To keep virtual students motivated, I want them to wrestle with real marketing problems. I do not encourage students, already isolated from classmates and their instructor, to cram alone for an exam and spout back passages from the textbook, only to forget key lessons once the semester ends. My course is designed to make students confront the challenges marketers face; they learn by doing. Students get their hands dirty by tackling real marketing problems. Merely studying for tests is just not a sufficiently involving experience. I banished tests.
My next challenge was the lecture. I enjoy lecturing and I have given well-received lectures in the marketing classes I taught at New York University. I could have easily adapted them and added a few new ones. As they are already mounted on PowerPoint slides, posting them on the course web site would have been easy. While I have been a fan of PowerPoint since 1985, when I beta-tested its very first release, PowerPoint is not a robust teaching tool for online classes. To be effective, PowerPoint slides need a parallel real-time presenter. While I could have recorded an audio track to accompany my slidesâsome instructors report great success doing just that and I have heard students praise the experienceâprerecorded lectures are just not interactive.
It became clear that to build a successful online course, I would have to structure my classes around case studies, not lectures. So I introduced two types of case studies. The first is a series of nine small cases designed to be solved individually. These briefs focus on a single topic. Students are given one week to develop, present, and discuss the assignment. The secondâthe showpiece of the courseâis an in-depth case study. These cases require students to work in virtual teams to solve real strategic and marketing plan objectives. The teams have two weeks to present and discuss their cases. As preparation often takes longer, teams may be given extra time to prepare their projects, some until the end of the semester.
Students post their individual and team projects for class discussion on a message board on the course web site. Besides coaching the teams as they prepare their projects, the principal way I insert myself in the process is by giving teams due dates and, at the end of each project, preparing an overview of the assignment, recapping strengths and weaknesses of solutions presented, and resolving issues that may have arisen during discussions. In the end, I post grades.
Students and Marketing Myths
Nearly all my students are working professionals. Typically, they may have already earned a degree in engineering or in another technological discipline. Their employers encourage them to get advanced degrees and most companies pick up the tab for all or part of their tuition. Employers are top corporations, such as Verizon, Pearson, JPMorgan Chase, Pfizer, Boeing, Honeywell, and Johnson & Johnson.
For working professionals, online courses with anytime, anywhere opportunity offer important benefits. Online education enables them to complete their degrees faster and more conveniently than if they attended traditional classes on campus. Hectic and ever-changing schedules, pressing demands of business travel, and the obligations of growing families make attending a fixed schedule of on-campus classes inconvenient, if not impossible.
Today's best marketers say that marketing is too important to be left to their department only. That's why good teamwork is essential for successful marketing. In today's competitive marketplace, businesses must focus their entire organization on delivering superior value to customers. In practice, this means building cross-functional teams. The marketing department can no longer dictate objectives, strategies, and timetables. It must engage other departments actively and seek their support. Marketers must earn trust, which requires teamwork. For courses designed to give students realistic experiences wrestling with delivering customer value, team projects are essential. Through them, students learn the art of debating, generating consensus, and delivering cogent proposals under tight deadlines. To be collaborative team players, students need to learn how to lead and follow.
In my consulting practice, I have observed clientsâmultinationals and start-upsâincreasingly rely on collaborative work performed by computer-mediated teams. As Robert Ubell, editor of this book, says, âVirtual teams replicate the way industry, commerce, and research is practiced everyday worldwide.â Virtual teams not only are appropriate for presenting marketing subject matter in its proper context and meeting the needs of my time-starved students, but also enable students to master unique challenges of participating in virtual teams in a relatively risk-free university environment.
Student Response to Virtual Teams
Students have strongâand conflictingâopinions about virtual teams. Most love and hate their team. Even students in a well-run team are frequently frustrated. At times, they would gladly abandon their project or, at the very least, a teammate or two. Students who share their frustrations with me about getting teammates to pull their weight remind me of the famous line, âHell is other people,â in Jean-Paul Sartre's play, No Exit. There is an important lesson here. Teamwork is not easy. Teammates often have unspoken agendas, which may not parallel the team's. Getting a virtual team to work together can often seem as vexing as herding cats. Yet we need not echo Sartre's pouting pessimism. You can develop enthusiastic teamwork in an online environment. Instructors can give teams boosts by acting as mentor, psychologist, rabbi, and arbitrator.
Suggestions that follow are designed to make virtual teams less like the strident interpersonal transactions from a French existentialist's play and more like the immortal 1927 New York Yankees.
Tip 1. Get teams off to a strong start. To get your teams off to a running start, you must set clear expectations. My online class syllabus, for instance, is far more detailed than those in traditional courses. It's wise to post messages about your expectations in several placesâin assignments, throughout the course site, in periodic class e-mails, and in detailed reviews of each project.
It's worthwhile to get to know your students well. In my orientation survey, I ask: What do you do for a living? How much work experience do you have? What did you study as an undergraduate? What degree are you studying for now? What do you know about marketing and marketers? In a traditional classroom, this information is gathered face-to-face. Obviously, online, such meetings are impossible. I am in New York City, while my students are all around the globeâMaryland, Illinois, California, Hong Kong, Taipei, and Moscow. Even for those within commuting distance to our Hoboken campus, tight schedules make face-to-face meetings difficult.
In addition to the survey, I hold a 10â15-minute phone conversation with each student a week before our online class begins. My purpose is to greet students, tell them about myself, clarify what I expect, and hear them express what they hope to achieve. These conversations are critical for establishing teacher presence in virtual classes.
It's also useful to give students a chance to introduce themselves to each other. My first individual assignment is designed to build strong teams. I ask students to post a personal statement, sometimes called a âtwo-minute pitchâ or âelevator pitch.â I require the assignment for two reasons. First, students will need to perfect pitches in their careers. Helping them market themselves is a good way to introduce them to the field. Second, from the team's perspective, students need to know their teammates and their competition.
Tip 2. Establish teams in the first week. To give teams a running start on their first team project, which is due the fourth week of class, I announce team rosters at the start of the first week. Typically, my teams are composed of three to five members. Because I assign four team projects, I aim for four students per team. I recommend that students not attempt to form their own teams. Virtual teams are not like pickup teams at the playground. Employees in a company do not commonly select their teammates. Besides, students do not have the time or the information necessary to form teams on their own. To move things along, instructors should select team members by trying to balance experience, skills, and background.
Tip 3. Contain the âMussolini.â A good team player must act as both a leader and a follower. It's best not to allow team members to dominate a team by force of personality. To preempt dictators, I recommend rotating team captains. With four members on each team and four team projects, every member will rotate leader and follower roles.
Team captains have critical responsibilities. They set the agen...
