Summary - Align with Teams and Technology

In summary of Section III it was first discussed and determined that alignment of processes for developing high-performance technology teams requires strong leadership. There are fractured school improvement endeavors that need to place a major focus on alignment. Simultaneous endeavors do not meet their full potential without the fundamentals of team building connected to learning and leadership processes. The synchronized and focused energy from leadership is needed to pull processes in alignment. In the same manner that team members must work together to exploit their collective strengths, these organizational processes can be aligned to exploit a simultaneity of processes.

Similar to dialogue, collaboration extends communication as a process of forming solutions to problems based on combinations of information and expertise from several sources such as data bases, shared documents, and individual team members. Collaboration is about relationships rather than exchanging and transmitting information, and with collaborative relationships, interactions are about creating shared space for playing with collective ideas that requires applications designed for teams. When teams collaborate, there is as much if not more focus on understanding processes as there is on producing results. Collaborative synergy can result if team members develop shared understandings, and especially, if these shared understandings were not possible with individual team members.

Electronic teamwork over the Internet can simplify distribution of information between remote units of the school system. Electronic distribution techniques save paper and time (information float), and easy dissemination of various materials to geographically dispersed team members is possible over the Internet. Electronic communication also provides a record of processes and reasons behind decisions. The Internet can provide instantaneous communication without a local area network (LAN), and to all team members that includes the exchange of materials (artifacts) to sites as far away as the other side of the globe.

The term "groupware" may cover numerous concepts, and with the rapid growth of new Web technologies, groupware will have a major impact on the everyday work of teams inside and outside of the school system. The merging of Web technologies with groupware and the difficult decisions to make in connecting teams is on the near horizon. Groupware is a category of software that resides on top of networks whether it is a local area network (LAN) or a wide area network (WAN). The need for groupware and its uses are changing as the Internet/intranet concept becomes more widely used in schools. The school's technological infrastructure will have to be adapted continuously and systematically as the Web pushes its way forward as the one structure capable of connecting everyone from students and teachers to board members and communities through groupware applications.

There are different kinds of technologies that make collaboration over the Internet possible. Computer-mediated communications (CMC) mechanisms are one type of collaborative technology. CMC mechanisms are designed to allow team members to communicate over a network and share objects during their collaborations. Synchronous CMC mechanisms provide real-time interaction and require the communicators to be on the network at the same time while asynchronous CMC mechanisms allow a time lag between correspondences and defer time.

Consistent on-line collaboration through time will build a virtual team with similar characteristics as real-time teams. Strong senses of loyalty and commitment to computer-mediated groups will result in the same fashion as when people develop senses of loyalty and commitment in real-world situations such as with neighbors, friends, and the workplace. Though different in their perception, virtual team relationships and activities are as real as those relationships formed in face-to-face teams.

Last updated: March 10, 1998