This research entails: (1) CyberGRID Net - developing a research data collection and analysis tool integrated into an existing global virtual engineering team working environment, and (2) CyberGRID Networks - utilizing that tool to develop fundamental insights into how globally distributed engineering teams enact complex design work together and with affordances in the virtual environment. The CyberGRID Net will be a research tool that augments an existing virtual environment developed by the investigators for global design work. It will extend current pedagogical tool functionality with the following research-oriented features: (1) the existing TeamWall model-sharing display will detect and track locations of object referencing actions (e.g., pointing to a feature in a design) and functionality will be added for participants to self-indicate when phenomena of research interest occur, (2) virtual environment recordings will be time-stamped when researcher-specified interactions take place, (3) avatar-avatar and avatar-object interactions will be detected along with metadata about the interaction, and (4) functionality will be added for collaborative discussion, data analysis and annotation across a global virtual research team.
In a series of experiments, the CyberGRID Net research infrastructure will be used to engage critical organizational research questions: How are Building Information Models (BIM) in the virtual environment used as a boundary objects to resolve conflicts in the knowledge system of global virtual engineering teams? How do conflicts emerge in avatar-avatar interactions? How are conflicting obligations resolved in virtual teams by emergent virtual team leaders? How are boundary objects used in a cross-cultural context? How do leadership styles and community of practice formation vary when team members come from different countries representing different cultures and standards of practice? These questions will be explored in three separate experiments employing a multi-method approach which includes ethnographic observation, social and interaction network analyses, and user reflection. They will involve international activities and will include graduate engineering students in the U.S., India and Finland, as well as industrial participants utilizing the CyberGRID in an industrial test case.
This research will utilize computational thinking to develop a new research tool to transform the way global virtual teams are researched, and to link avatar-object interactions into network analyses to transform approaches to modeling knowledge systems in global virtual teams. The CyberGRID Net tool will be used in experiments to expand knowledge system dynamics theory as well as theories of virtual team network formation and leadership. This research may lead to fundamental transformations in design pedagogy which, in turn, can provide new exciting engineering career paths. The research may also improve strategies of engineering firms and policymakers concerned about the leadership role of U.S. engineers in the global workforce.
