Research

Virtual teams, which consist of people who work together remotely from different locations, are becoming increasingly common as they have obvious advantages for organizations (e.g., reduced time and travel expenses) and their employees (e.g., increased job flexibility and independence). Businesses have recently discovered the potential benefit of using virtual worlds, such as Second Life, to enrich virtual team collaboration.

Virtual worlds offer the visual, aural, and spatial dimensions that are lacking in the lean communication channels of traditional computer-mediated communication tools. These 3D Collaborative Virtual Environments (CVE) make it possible for team members to communicate synchronously via chat or audio channels while being present in the same virtual room embodied as avatars, that is a 3D digital representation of themselves.

The ShanghAI Lectures participants work in an international virtual team on weekly group exercises and projects in a newly developed CVE. The teams consist of participants from all over the world, with different cultural and educational backgrounds.

The ShanghAI Lectures therefore provide a unique opportunity to investigate global virtual team behavior in novel collaboration environments and evaluate their benefits and shortcomings. We are especially interested in finding out how cultural differences are perceived in the virtual world. Can virtual environments help to overcome the obstacles that diverse teams encounter in face-to-face collaboration? We have the unique opportunity to answer this and similar questions with the research conducted during the ShanghAI Lectures.

The aim of the ShanghAI Lectures is to provide the students with a unique learning experience. As part of this, the results of our analyses will be shared with those who participated in the research project and contributed to its success. By participating in this research project, students will also learn what factors influence global virtual learning and help us to better understand virtual collaboration in a global world.

The ShanghAI Lectures is the first global virtual academic collaboration project of its kind and its outcomes will influence virtual collaborations in the years to come.

For more detailed information on the research project in the context of the ShanghAI Lectures, please refer to the full research description (PDF).

Further reading on the use of virtual worlds in business:

• Olga Kharif: The virtual meeting room. BusinessWeek, April 16, 2007.
• Rachael King: The (virtual) global office. BusinessWeek, May 2, 2008.

Further reading on virtual world research:

• Journal of Virtual World Research
• Presence - Teleoperators and Virtual Environments
• Terra Nov (Blog)
• Daedalus Project (Blog)