Productive Online Teamwork Engagement Through Intelligent Mediation

Modern work environments are becoming increasingly distributed. As a result, the ability of employees to work in a virtual environment is becoming essential for corporate success. Employers expect higher education institutions to prepare students to operate as productive members and leaders of virtual teams.

While research has built compelling pedagogical frameworks to improve in-class teamwork performance, more research-based mechanisms are needed to maximize student engagement and build teamwork skills in online education environments. Focusing on large enrollment courses in higher education, this project will study the use of effective teamwork in the online classroom by (1) developing and testing technologies that promote social presence, (2) identifying pedagogies that facilitate teamwork in an online environment, and (3) promoting productive online teamwork engagement.

To promote productive online teamwork engagement, this design-based research project will develop the PECAS Mediator, an educational innovation that provides (1) AI-enabled monitoring, (2) productive and unproductive interaction detection, and (3) faculty mediation via just-in-time guidance. The high-level conjecture of this project is that monitoring and mediation, enabled by evidence-based pedagogical practices and technological innovations, will increase social presence within online teamwork sessions resulting in increased teamwork engagement.

The project has two main objectives: (1) Deploy and validate the intelligent monitoring and mediation PECAS Mediator to promote social presence and collaborative learning, and (2) Investigate the effect of increased social presence and collaborative learning on teamwork engagement. The theoretical conjecture of this project is that social presence mediating processes will lead to productive engagement manifested as behavioral engagement via team effectiveness, cognitive engagement via team performance, and affective engagement via positive attitudes toward teamwork.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.