BN 301 Virtual Team Project

BN 301 Virtual Team Project Overview
300 points

You and 5-6 other BN 301 students across all three sections will be assigned to a virtual team by the third week of class. All teams will contain at least 1 member from each section of BN 301.

We will have around 12 teams of 6-7 people in a competitive team project. You could compare this project to the competitive projects on The Apprentice, except that there will be many more teams and much more time. As in The Apprentice, however, the winning team will earn rewards.

The intent is for your team to work virtually on this project – to simulate globally "far-flung" teams who work together from remote locations and rarely, if ever, meet face-to-face.

While your team may want to meet face-to-face the first time you get together (and at other critical times during the project), the intent is for your team to primarily employ principles of effective virtual-team collaboration and accomplish your project's goal virtually – by experimenting with several types of non-face-to-face communication, such as:

e-mail
instant messaging
phone and possibly phone conferencing
group communication space on Blackboard
Facebook
others? (be creative!)

Your challenge is to be chosen as the winning team. The winning team is the one that sells itself as the best choice to execute a communications plan. IMPORTANT NOTE: Your team does not actually have to execute this plan; you just have to be chosen as the best team to execute the plan.

Team deliverables: Your final team project is to develop a means (a "pitch," in other words) to convince the judge(s) that your team is best suited for the job of executing a communications plan. To successfully pitch your team, you will need to provide a taste of the communication plan that you would execute if chosen, but it does not need to be a full-blown plan.

In addition, your team is responsible for these deliverables:

Team name
Team mission statement
Team resume

See specifics and due dates here.

Communication Plan

Premise of this semester's project: A Communications Plan relating to "No Football? So What? Generating School Spirit at Stetson:"

Several of you commented on your Student Information Forms that the thing you like least about Stetson is lack of school spirit. Many of Stetson's sports teams are poorly supported by students and the Stetson community at large. More importantly, there is no rabid, fervent sense of "Hatter pride" for the school in general as is seen at many other schools.

Most interested parties, especially students, blame Stetson's lack of a football team for the lack of school spirit. Thus, one of the challenges of this project is to determine ways that school spirit can be generated and communicated without adding a football team. Assume that adding football at Stetson is NOT an option.

I have heard some talk that a change in Stetson's mascot is in the works – not just the physical representation of the Hatter, but the entire "Hatter" concept. You can incorporate the change of mascot into your plan but it should be only a small part of the overall focus.

Your focus should also not be just sports but an overall sense of school pride and spirit.

Assume that Stetson wants to hire a consulting team to figure out how to generate school spirit. Your team is one of the teams vying for the consulting project, and you will make a pitch to sell Stetson on choosing your team to execute a plan.

Consider what communication processes might help build better school spirit throughout Stetson. How can communication processes help generate more enthusiasm and pride among students for the university, its sports teams, its academics, and more? What specific communication processes and opportunities would be needed to change the culture from one lacking in school spirit to one brimming with pride? What could Stetson do so that more students band together, support the school, and tell the world they are proud to attend SU?

Keep in mind that this is NOT a marketing project, although some elements of persuasion and branding could be included in your team's project.

"[A]ny decision radically to change, integrate, or maintain the existing [organizational] culture requires an understanding of the cultural and subcultural values and beliefs throughout the ... organization." (Cartwright & Cooper, 1996, pp. 5, 126)

Consider what kind of communication plan your team could propose that would bring town and gown closer together. Possibilities might include:

a public-awareness campaign
training programs
group dynamics
wider systemic and cultural changes
leadership initiatives ("thought leaders," "opinion leaders")
events
projects

Be specific about what any of these approaches might include.

Part of your grade relqates to conducting research for your pitch – surveys, focus groups, interviews with students, faculty, administrators, staff, research into what elements go into a communications plan that effectively changes attitudes, research into persuasive communication, research into what other schools have done to address the same kinds of problems. You may especially want to include alumni in your research because they seem to have more SU spirit than current students do, and they remember a time when Stetson had more spirit and what made that time different from now.

*Remember, you do not need to develop a full-blown plan; you just need to develop enough to convey a feel for what your team has in mind, enough to sell the judge(s) on the fact that your team should be chosen to execute your plan. Assume that a healthy but not unlimited budget is available to execute your team's plan. Ths healthy budget would NOT cover infrastructural changes, such as adding a football program.

Virtual Team Check-In: Teams must schedule appointments with instructor during Weeks 7-8 to discuss their progress, address problems, questions.

Presenting your pitch: Your team can choose any way you want (within reason) to present your pitch. It could be:

A virtual pitch (PowerPoint presentation, or Web page[s], maybe even e-mail)
A hard-copy document
A live presentation (if you choose this route, you will need to consult with instructor to schedule the presentation)
A live presentation in combination with other components (if you choose this route, you will need to consult with instructor to schedule the presentation)
An audio presentation.
A video presentation.
Something else (be creative). Consider new-media venues such as MySpace/Facebook pages, Podcasts, Wikis, blogs, RSS, text messaging as (a) part of delivering your pitch (b) ways for your team can communicate (c) part of your recommendations for generating/communicating school spirit.

Judges will include Prof. Kathy Hansen and possibly a larger panel consisting of other faculty members, administrators.

Judging/Grading criteria: Your project will be judged and graded based on these criteria:

Overall cohesiveness of theme or message: Having a clear message and executing it throughout your deliverables.
Presenting and selling the team's qualifications.
Creativity: Both your ideas and execution strive to be outside the box. You've done more than just regurgitate the ideas presented in this project description.
Production quality: Whatever your product, it should look and sound professional and is something you would be proud to present to a real client.
Research: Your team needs to show that you have built your plan on a solid base of research. Your project should demonstrate support that your plan will be effective.
Bonus – Virtual Team Spirit: You are not required to demonstrate virtual team spirit in your deliverables, but this semester raises the stakes in that extra incentives for virtual-team spirit are provided in the grading and judging. A special cash-value award for Virtual Team Spirit is up for grabs, as is the awarding of 100 bonus pts. How do you demonstrate Virtual Team Spirit? In part, through the assessments that team members' complete at the end of the project. These assessments give you the opportunity to assess the willingness of each team member to conduct the project as virtually as possible. They also give you the opportunity to analyze the breakdown of virtual vs. non-virtual communication methods your group used. Important: If your team wants to be considered for the Virtual Team Spirit Award, submit as much evidence as you can when you submit your project to show that your team executed its work primarily virtually (e.g., chatroom transcripts, IM transcripts, e-mail transcripts, Blackboard discussion-board transcripts, etc.)
It is conceivable that the same team that places first could also win the Virtual Team Spirit Award.

Rewards: In addition to regular points toward your grade in BN 301, members of the winning team, as well as winners of the Virtual Team Spirit Award, will win bonus points PLUS a prize with monetary value, such as gift cards. Runner-up teams will earn descending numbers of bonus points. See details.

Key dates, documents/activities, and points
Detailed description follows table

Date	Activity or Deliverable Due	Point Value
Week 3 (1/22)	Virtual Teams Assigned	n/a
Week 4 (1/29)	DUE: Team Name (E-mail to instructor)	15 points
Week 5 (2/5)	DUE: Team Mission Statement	50 points
Week 6 (2/12)	DUE: Team Resume	100 points
Weeks 7-8 (2/20-2/27)	Virtual Team Check-In: Teams must schedule appointments with instructor to discuss their progress, address problems, questions.	n/a
Week 9 (3/12)	If your team needs to schedule a live presentation as your final project, you MUST alert instructor by this week.	n/a
Week 11 (3/28)	DUE: Final Team Project	110 points
Week 12 (4/2)	DUE: Assessment of Team Members' Individual Contribution to Virtual Team Project form http://www.stetson.edu/~khansen/bn301/group_assess.html	25 points
		Total group points = 300

Rewards
In addition to points awarded for deliverables as shown above, the following will be awarded:

Place of finish	Bonus Points	Additional Reward
1st place team	100	Each member gets prize with cash value
Virtual Team Spirit Award	100	Each member gets prize with cash value
2nd place team	90
3rd place team	80
4th place team	70
5th place team	60
6th place team	50
7th place team	40
8th place team	30
9th place team	20
10th place team	10
11th place team	05
Below 11th place	0

Details of Deliverables

In their book in Virtual Teams (2000), Jessica Lipnack and Jeffrey Stamps outline 7 steps for successful virtual teams. While it is hoped that your team will engage in all 7 steps, only 3-4 of them are required as graded assignments for this Virtual Team Project. The 7 steps and 3 graded deliverables (excluding final project deliverable) are:

1. Create identity: Team Name
2. Draft mission: Team Mission
3. Determine milestones.
4. Set goals.
5. Identify members: Team Resume
6. Establish relationships (This step could also contribute to Team Resume).
7. Choose [communication] media.

Team Name: "A team's name symbolizes its identity, it smallest mental model," write Jessica Lipnack and Jeffrey Stamps in Virtual Teams (2000, p. 214). "Names may be wild creative expressions of mission or merely descriptive tags... Your name labels your team. Consider a formal name that clearly communicates what the team is about." E-mail your team name to instructor by Week 4.

Team Mission: "Rule number 1 of every team is to get the purpose right early and review it often (Lipnack & Stamps, 2000, p. 215). "This exercise is at once more important and more difficult for virtual teams. Even when it receives its purpose as an explicit charter from above [or as a class assignment], a team must do the hard work of interpreting and expressing the mission in its own words. Functioning with far less oversight than is customary for a traditional team, everyone on a virtual team must understand and agree with the purpose....We cannot overstate the value of a virtual team cycling through its purpose-setting exercise several times... Your team must must make its purpose explicit and concrete. For some, this means writing down the purpose in a formal mission statement; for some, it is a list of outcomes; Still others will embrace a diagram or picture that captures the essence of what the team is about.... Answer this question: 'Why are we doing this?' Draft a statement of intent...Use verbs, action words.... Now answer: 'What are we going to do?' [Try to] name the team's primary result... Where criteria for success are clear, state them... Every mission statement and its proposed result sit inside a broader vision...it's the vision that stirs the passion of purpose – or the ho-hum lack of it... E-mails, memos, diagrams, presentations, white papers, and other symbols of shared motivation accumulate and help spark the emotional bonds that carry the chemistry of collaboration." Construct a mission in whatever form your team chooses – formal statement, a few sentences, a paragraph, several paragraphs, a page or more, a list, a diagram, a drawing – whatever way best expresses your team's mission and submit to instructor via e-mail, in the Blackboard drop box or as hard copy, by Week 5.

Team Resume: [Adapted from an exercise developed by Paula J. Caproni, Ph.D., University of Michigan Business School]: Collectively, your team has an amazing amount of talent, knowledge, experience, and resources to bring to your team task. Your challenge is to create a one-page team resume that reflects this talent, knowledge, experience, and resources.

This exercise is useful when forming a new team for several reasons:

It focuses team members’ attention on the resources they collectively have that can enhance team performance (that they would not have as individuals).
It is an easy and fun way to help team members learn about each other, develop respect for each other, have some fun together, and develop common ground. These processes are especially important for diverse and virtual teams.
It helps avoid unconscious stereotyping by giving team members an opportunity to have more control over how they are perceived (rather than leave first impressions to the stereotyping that is likely to occur when people meet each other for the first time)
It is a quick way to identify team strengths and weaknesses/gaps.

Procedures: Try to incorporate guidelines for good resume writing while considering inclusion of the following topics (and any others your team chooses):

Education (the group's collect years of education, for example)
Professional experience (the group's collective years of professional experience)
Positions held
Professional skills
Cognitive styles (e.g., using Myers-Briggs or other cognitive style descriptors)
Accomplishments and awards
International experience (e.g., nationalities represented, personal or professional experience in different countries, languages spoken)
Special skills (especially those relevant to the team's project)
HINT: Past students have asked for sample team resumes, but more creativity and variety emerges when no samples are provided. One suggestion resulting from reviewing past team resumes is that all team members' names appear on the resume.

Submit your team resume to instructor via e-mail, in the Blackboard drop box or as hard copy, by Week 6.

Final Team Project/Pitch: See details above. Contact instructor with any questions/concerns. Due Week 11 (March 28).

Assessment of Team Members' Individual Contribution to Virtual Team Project: Each member of your team must also submit the form Assessment of Team Members' Individual Contribution to Team Project on or before April 2. The form is at http://www.stetson.edu/~khansen/bn301/group_assess.html and should be submitted online. The form enables you to evaluate the contribution of each group member, including yourself, to the group project, and you cannot receive your group grade without submitting this form and including yourself on it.

Additional Resources on Virtual Teams

YOU WILL FIND SOME HELPFUL HANDOUTS/FORMS IN THE COURSE DOCUMENTS SECTION OF BLACKBOARD.

In her article, "Creating Successful Online Team Communication," Genie Black suggests some additional aspects team members may want to consider to get organized, get acquainted, establish communication goals, and take the first step toward creating team cohesion:

Team members' contact information: phone, fax, e-mail addresses.
Team member skills inventory: strengths, contributions they feel they can make to the team, identification of areas for improvement.
Learning team goals: goals for quality, group processes, project work, timelines for completion of team work.

Potential barriers to the achievement of these goals.
Conflict management: what potential conflicts might arise and how to team members plan to resolve these conflicts.

Preliminary project plan: identification of the tasks involved in the team project, who will be responsible for each task, completion date for each task, whether the team will assign a leader.
Communication Protocol: a set of guidelines for behavior including such issues as when/how to notify the team if the student has to miss a meeting, turn-around time for responding to e-mails/phone calls/faxes, teams norms, procedures for reviewing and editing documents, generating ideas for team building.

Virtual Teamwork: http://faculty.css.edu/dswenson/web/VirtualTeam/virtualteamhome.html
Large collection of links

Virtual Teams: http://www.managementhelp.org/grp_skll/virtual/virtual.htm

Factors Influencing Virtual Teams http://www.seanet.com/%7Edaveg/articles.htm#Factors

The Coolest Kind of Collaboration http://netage.com/press/itworld_lamont.htm

Coach Universe Virtual Teams.htm http://www.coachuniverse.com/virtualteams.htm
Links and resources/tools

Working Together at a Distance http://www.devicelink.com/mddi/archive/02/01/007.html

Virtual Team Stories http://netage.com/pub/pub_fr.htm