Tri: Hazel's Self-reflection (50468864)

Regarding to the virtual collaborative experience in the virtual teams, we mainly communicated with each others through emails because we all thought that it was more clear to express each one’s ideas and everything was documented by email instead of instant message mobile apps (e.g. whatsapp, line etc.), which was disorganized and difficult to look for the history, as everybody can “speak” at the same time in instant message mobile apps. However, in comparing with the face-to-face discussion, I think it is very time consuming for making decision through virtual communication.

There were altogether six team members in our team including the morning team, however, only four of us were actively contributed our ideas and comments during the discussion through emails. And, I am one of these four members. I think it was really hard to ask for all the team members’ ideas through virtual communication, as some members may be too shy or passive to response.

When we were brainstorming for the ideas of the topic of virtual collaboration and the two collaborative parties, we found some difficulties to brainstorm. For brainstorming, we definitely would like all of us to express the ideas, as many as we could. Unfortunately, some of our team members might be too shy to express their ideas, I thought it was very time consuming to invite these members to join our discussion by virtual communication. I think virtual communication could be more effective if every team members are self-motivated, independent, self-governance, flexible and willing to share their comment, otherwise, virtual communication is very time consuming and ineffective.

For face-to-face discussion, it is easier to invite a specific team member to share his/her ideas by an appropriate eye contact. But, I think it might too embarrass to state the name of a specific team member and ask for his/her comments in virtual communication. It was because I did not know that team member very well and did not know his/her personality, and I did not know if he/she might think I was too rude to do so. Therefore, time was needed to let them realized we were asking for their ideas or comments.

After brainstorming of the ideas, we had to come up with two ideas of the topics of the virtual collaboration project for presentation. We spent nearly a week to discuss and decide the two ideas. It was because we had to wait each team member to express their comments in virtual communication, and after that, some of us responded to some of the comments, and discussed. As we understood that not everyone checked email very frequently, we might not reply immediately. As a result, we had to be patient and wait, it had taken lots of time to discuss a task and make conclusion in virtual communication.

During that time, I thought we had to wait and could not do anything which might slow down our processes in doing the task. To discuss and decide two ideas of the topics of the virtual collaboration, it took nearly a week, I thought it was too time consuming to make the decision. And, I thought it was not allowed to have an in-depth discussion as time was limited. If we still discussed through email back and forth, I believed the time was too tight for us to prepare the presentation.

After presentation of the two preliminary ideas of the topics of the virtual collaboration project, we realized that these two ideas were not very appropriated. Then our team suggested another idea and sought for the comments of the morning team. During the discussion, they came up with a new idea suddenly after we finalized the topic, and at that time, I thought they might not understand our idea, so we had to explain once again in order to let them understand the whole concept of the idea, refer to Appendix I for details. In virtual communication, it was easier to misunderstand each others’ ideas, and hard to communicate clearly.

After we finalized the topic of the virtual collaboration project, and confirmed the two collaborative parties, we and the morning team started to do our presentation separately. During the preparation of the presentation, I found that there were many misunderstanding between our team and the morning team. There were many questions from the morning team that they would like to clarify with us about the virtual collaboration, however, we were quite surprised that they might misunderstand what we discussed in the previous stages, refer to Appendix II for details. Then, I thought it was really hard to avoid misunderstanding through virtual communication, and even we did not know they misinterpreted our ideas during the discussion. Therefore, it was necessary for us to clarify our topic of virtual collaboration, and to make sure everybody clearly understood the topic and the two parties.

In this experience, I found that people may easily misinterpret others’ ideas in the virtual communication, and the most serious problem was even the team members themselves did not realized that they were both misunderstood each others. As we communicated with each others via email, we could not see other team members’ facial expressions, and we might get different meanings from messages in the email. Therefore, misunderstanding among each others occurred. And, lots of time was needed to clarify those issues and make sure everybody was followed the same right track with the team.

As the theory mentioned that there are Centralized Communication Network and Decentralized Communication Network. The Centralized Communication Network is a communication that funneled through a central person, usually the leader. In centralized networks, the leader usually makes all the decisions, and then checks it out with other person; while the Decentralized Communication Network is a communication network in which all group members have access to the same number of communication channels.

In my experience of our virtual collaboration, I think we did not have a leader in our team, and all of our team members would freely respond to each others individually. I think we were having decentralized communication network, because we could access to the same number of communication channels. In this kind of communication network, I think it was more convenience for us to communicate with every team members in the virtual collaboration. And, each team member could access to other team members ideas directly.

In the type of communication matters, the theory stated that we must balance “Task” and “Maintenance” communication with all team members in order to have a better group cohesion and task performance. The number of Task and Maintenance statements in groups affects cohesion and task performance. And, it is suggested to have a ratio of task / maintenance is 60/40. The “Task” is relates directly to goal achievement, such as giving or seeking information about tasks, proposing new tasks or goals, suggesting task procedures and giving alternatives; while the “Maintenance” is relates to the socio-emotional life of the group, such as offering support and encouragement, sensing feeling sand moods, listening actively and discussing “non-work” issues.

However, I found that there were only “Task” statements, and nearly no “Maintenance” statements in our virtual collaboration team. In our virtual communication, we mainly focused on how to complete the virtual collaboration project. Therefore, we just giving or seeking information about the topics of the virtual collaboration, proposing new topics or the two collaborative parties and discussing the schedules on the works allocation.

But, we overlooked the “Maintenance” statements. We did not consider the socio-emotional life of the group. That might be a reason that affected our group cohesion, and result in hard to compromise and make decisions.

In this virtual collaboration experience, although I think it is very time consuming for making decision through virtual communication in comparing with the face-to-face discussion, I believed it can be improved by different ways of virtual communication, such as videoconference. In this virtual collaboration project, we only used the emails as our communication channel, I think we can try to use multi communication channels instead of just one communication channel in the future. At the beginning of the project, we only considered few communication channels that are the email, instant message mobile apps, but we did not explore more communication channels. And, we did not notice the problem of using emails. Although the message history of our discussion was completely documented, it was easily misunderstand other team members’ ideas or comment. At that time, we only tried to clarify and explain the point of views again, but we did not try to find out another way to communicate more effective and efficient. If we change the communication channel to videoconference, then it may be save lots of time for clarification and explanation of the ideas and comments. I think all of our team members were not very familiar with the virtual collaboration, so we did not communicate very well in this project. However, it was also a very good experience for us to try and learn how to collaborate with other team members in a virtual situation.

Actually, it was the first time for me to complete a project in virtual collaboration, I think it was a good experience for me to learn and try a new thing. In virtual collaboration, every team member has to be self-motivated, self-governance, independent and also have knowledge on the communication and coordination technology; otherwise, I think virtual collaboration may not work. For successful virtual collaboration, it helps to gather different people in different places and share their knowledge, which is more flexible and save the physical spaces.

To conclude this virtual collaboration experience, I think it is very time consuming for making decision through virtual communication in comparing with the face-to-face discussion. We had to spend lots of time to clarify and understand the other team members’ ideas and comments, as well as their meaning in the emails. And, it took times to wait for others’ responses. When we had to make decision, we had to go through many stages in the virtual communication. Firstly, we had to wait to see if any other new ideas from the team members. Secondly, we had to discuss and vote for the most appropriate topic. If there was anything we had to modify, then we had to wait for other team members’ comments. Thirdly, we could decide the topic of our virtual collaboration project, but if there was anything needs to be revised, we had to wait for other team members’ comments again. Finally, we could successfully make the decision. However, if any further comments of the final decision, we had to ask and wait again for other team members’ comments.

In the whole process of virtual communication, “wait” is something that we had to spend lots of time on it, in order to make the final decision. That is why I experienced that it is very time consuming for making decision through virtual communication.

Appendix I

An email from Sylvia (Tick Tack) that described a new idea came up suddenly