Blog #3

St. Amant, K. (2002). Integrating intercultural online learning experiences into the computer classroom. Technical Communication Quarterly 11(3), 289-315.

Creating a successful group project in a Professional Writing course that results in a unified document written by several different people can be quite difficult in a relatively homogeneous face-to-face classroom environment. If an instructor attempts to migrate (Warnock 2009) this project to an online classroom and faces the realities of a culturally and linguistically heterogeneous student body at the same time, many different factors have to be taken into account that require careful planning from the instructor to ensure the most optimal outcome.

In the article “Integrating intercultural online learning experiences into the computer classroom” St. Amant describes some of the challenges instructors face when they work with students from different cultures and provides some practical exercises that can help students to understand all the factors that affect their peers’ performance. According to St. Amant, one of the issues that play a major role is language. To ensure that language issues don’t become a problem in a virtual Professional Writing course, St. Amant provides several strategies for instructors in a different article (2007). First, he states that the standard language of class discussion and subsequent documents should be identified early on to avoid the mixture of different dialects or World Englishes. Furthermore, he suggests that instructors identify ahead of time which students might have a difficulty and provide them with different strategies (such as online tutoring) to remedy these issues. Another suggestion in the article stresses the importance of creating student web pages by each student, so that everyone has a clear understanding of each student’s linguistic background.

In addition, it is also important that students take into account the different cultural expectations associated with communication (St. Amant 2002). These cultural expectations can have an effect on how identities are represented and perceived, how arguments are presented, and how often and with how much formality students communicate. It is crucial, for this reason, that students understand how the different rhetorical styles represented within a group can influence their collaborative writing process and product.

While creating individual web pages may seem like a good idea to get people to know each other, St. Amant does not discuss what type of information should be presented on these pages. Clearly, students from individualistic cultures will post different types of information than those from collectivist cultures. For this reason, I think that instructors using the personal web page idea should create clear culturally sensitive guidelines on what type and how much information students place on these personal websites that would foster cultural diversity without alienating certain students right at the beginning.

This article contains suggestions that are applicable to any writing instructor who has a culturally and/or linguistically heterogeneous classroom, I would recommend it to anyone, and especially those who plan to integrate personal student web pages into their online curriculum.

References

St. Amant, K. (2002).Online education in an age of globalization: Foundational practices for technical communication instructors and trainers. Technical Communication Quarterly 16(1), 13-31.

Warnock, S. (2009). Teaching Writing Online: How and Why? Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English

Blog #2

Grosse, C. U. (2002). Managing communication within virtual intercultural teams. Business Communication Quarterly 65(4), 22-38.

While creating effective virtual teams in online writing courses is a challenge in itself, the fact that in today’s US college classes there are many students with different cultural and linguistic backgrounds further complicates the issue. Instructors have to take into account not only the differences in personality of team members, but also different communication styles and expectations that stem from team members’ varied cultures. Grosse’s article discusses what kinds of complications arise in intercultural teams and how these can be overcome by using different strategies.

In her study, Grosse surveyed 90 graduate business students after they participated in a virtual e-commerce project in teams where at least two team members came from a different culture. To augment these results, Grosse also interviewed international business executives about their practices in intercultural communication. According to the results of her study, Grosse stresses that participants can make the most of these intercultural teams by understanding how diversity can strengthen a team and by showing intercultural sensitivity.

In addition to looking at intercultural issues, Grosse also reviews different methods of communication within the virtual groups. Her findings indicate email to be a very effective way of communication in both groups of respondents, students and executives. In addition, she highlights that initial face-to-face encounters also help in building the personal relationships that aid teamwork and promote appreciation of the rich cultural backgrounds of team members.

While the results in Grosse’s article clearly indicate that building personal relationships are essential in an academic environment for a successful group project, Larbi and Springfield (2004) suggest a different method for virtual teams of technical writers to ensure that remote project teams are effective. Larbi and Springfield propose a four step approach to successful virtual team projects: 1. learning special behaviors, 2 using media appropriately, 3. following a best practice, and 4. being prepared. The best practice they suggest that technical writers follow is being result oriented, because focusing on personalities rather than on the project will take away from the effectiveness of the team, or as Scotto (2001) puts it, team members need to stay focused on the project, not each other.

Larbi and Springfield advocate the establishment of communities of practice that are held together by common purpose and the need for shared knowledge. While this common purpose may be enough to create a community in even multicultural work teams, the question is would the same approach work in educational settings? I believe that communities of inquiry in educational settings have different motivations from work teams and thus being strictly result-oriented as a practice that works in a corporate environment cannot be seamlessly transferred into education. Thus, creating personal relationships in group projects of online classes is even more important with intercultural teams so that team members are able to bring in an appreciation of the diversity represented in their team as a cohesive force.

References
Larbi, N. and Springfield, S. (2004) When no one’s home: Being a writer on remote project teams. Technical Communication 51(1), 102-108.
Scotto, M. (2001). Basic Project Management for Information Systems Professionals. New York: The Scotto Group Inc.

Blog #1

Berry, G. R. (2006). Can computer-mediated asynchronous communication improve team process and decision making? Learning from the management literature. Journal of Business Communication 43(4), 344-366.

Many online writing courses have a group project component. This is especially the case in Professional Writing courses, as one of the major objectives of these courses regardless of the form of delivery is to teach students how to collaborate with others in data-gathering from printed and online sources, and in selecting, organizing, revising, and reporting information in written and oral form. Since it is important in Professional Writing courses to introduce students to the best communication practices used in the corporate world when designing these courses, research articles that describe lessons learned in the corporate environment cannot be neglected.

One such article, written by Berry, provides a review of business communication and management studies published in the last 25 years that address the advantages and disadvantages of computer-mediated asynchronous communication (CMAC) in improving team work and aiding the decision making process. In this article, Berry argues that CMAC has a positive effect on team decision making process, because it allows every team member to contribute equally regardless of their status in the organization and thus results in more alternatives to be considered. In addition when using CMAC, team members have more time to react to each individual’s contribution and the discussion is archived and can be retrieved any time. Furthermore, CMAC can help eliminate free riders in teams, since as the discussion progresses it becomes increasingly apparent when someone is not participating. CMAC may also allow increased participation of team members who are shy and would be reluctant to speak up in face-to-face meetings. While all these advantages can aid the decision making process, Berry points out that it is important to have an explicit communication plan and that expectations need to be made clear ahead of time. Also, other means of communication, especially face-to face, may need to be used when trying to reach a consensus towards the end of the decision making process.

I believe that the lessons learned about CMAC from management research listed in Berry’s article can effectively be applied in the design of a team project for an online Professional Writing course. This study can especially be helpful in the process of designing procedures in the prewriting phase, when important decisions have to be made about the content and main points of the group report, the end product of the group project. Berry’s findings would suggest that asynchronous communication is the right way to prepare for making a decision, however when consensus needs to be reached, it is advisable to switch to a synchronous method, such as group chat or possibly video conferencing. Because this article has some directly applicable findings that could improve group projects, I would recommend it to Professional Writing teachers and scholars.