The Effective Digital Socrates: Developing Trust in Virtual Learning Communities

1
The Effective Digital Socrates Developing Trust
in Virtual Learning Communities

• ALN Orlando November 2001
• Nancy W. Coppola
• S. Roxanne Hiltz
• Naomi Rotter

2
Trust Development in Virtual Teams

• Online faculty role changes
• Faculty perceptions of online community building
• Correlation to theories of swift trust with
  coding scheme
• Strategies for trust formation

3
Online Faculty Role Changes ( Prior ALN
presentation)

• Authors designed and conducted 20 semi-structured
  interviews with faculty
• Cognitive role deeper cognitive complexity
• Affective role new tools to express emotion
• Managerial role more detail, structure, and
  monitoring

4
Swift Trust concept developed by Meyerson,
Weick, and Kramer (1996)

• Swift trust is a concept relating to temporary
  teams whose existence is formed around a clear
  purpose and common task with a finite life span.
  
• Its elements include a willingness to suspend
  doubt about whether others who are "strangers"
  can be counted on in order to get to work on the
  group's task...

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Swift Trust elements

• ...and a positive expectation that the group
  activity will be beneficial.
• It is built and maintained by a high level of
  activity and responsiveness.

6
Global Virtual Teams (prior research)

• Distinct communication and behaviors
• Analysis of behaviors and actions both in early
  and later stages of group work
• Jarvenpaa and Leidner 1998

7
Research hypotheses

• Faculty who become successful virtual professors
  overcome the coldness in the electronic media
  with social communication clues in discussion
  conferences.
• The most effective online teachers get a good
  start in the very first week of online classes
• Once established, swift trust remains

8
Research Methods

• Selected most effective teacher using data from
  student questionnaires
• Examined instructors online discussion forums or
  conferences
• Analyzed Introduction conference in which
  instructor and students introduce themselves

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Coding the Data

• Interaction Process Analysis (Bales, 1950)
  (modified)
• Pattern analysis software (QSR NVIVO)

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Swift Trust Coding Scheme

• Positive expectations about the course
• Negative expectations about the course
• Social emotional positive
• Social emotional negative
• Task area asks for help
• Task area gives help
• Technical/logistical/procedural

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Early Communication

• Out of 297 coded passages in the Introductions
  Conference
• 35 instances of instructor social emotional
  positive (32) or negative (3)
• 74 instances of student social emotional positive
• Most frequent is hello or variations

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Expectations

• Enthusiasm facilitates early trust
• Evidence of positive expectations about the
  course in 34 instructor instances and 89 student
  instances
• Im looking forward to getting to know you. I
  hope I will have interesting discussions about
  diverse issues in the class.

13
Task-Related Communication

• Coping with technical and task uncertainty is
  important
• Evident in giving information
• 15 instructor passages
• 53 student passages
• Evident in asking for help
• 6 instructor passages
• 12 student passages

14
Later Communication

• Later trust formation is shown by predictable
  communication
• Frequency counts show consistent pattern in first
  weeks and in weeks nine and ten of classes

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Strategies for Community Building

• Establish early communication
• Team members need to perceive the instructors
  presence as soon as they enter the course
• Develop a positive social atmosphere
• Team members respond to perceived caring in
  course
• Model solidarity, congeniality, and affiliation

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Strategies for Community Building

• Reinforce predictable patterns in communication
  and action
• Students need carefully structured activities and
  regular feedback
• Involve team members in tasks
• Group members need to be involved in meaningful
  tasks in the first week.

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Summary

• In order to build swift trust at the beginning of
  a course, the instructor needs to structure clear
  contributions for each student to make, help them
  cope with any technical or task uncertainties,
  model and encourage response to each others'
  contributions.
• Early encouragement of social communications
  (and explicit statements of commitment,
  excitement and optimism) also strengthen trust.

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Conclusions

• Swift trust does form in virtual learning
  communities
• Faculty overcome coldness in electronic medium
  with social communication
• Effective online teachers get a good start in
  first week
• Once established, swift trust carries over if
  high levels of action are maintained

19
Future Research

• Analysis needs to go beyond one instructor
• Findings need to be correlated with
  semi-structured interview
• Compare findings with an analysis of instructors
  not highly rated

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For more details

• N. Coppola, S. R. Hiltz, and N. Rotter.
  "Building Trust in Virtual Teams." Proceedings
  of IEEE Professional Communication Society 2001
  International Professional Communication
  Conference. Santa Fe, New Mexico, (October 2001).