Tuesday 22 may

Today was a good day at the csir. With our minds still fresh at nine in the morning we attended a knowledge creation workshop. the workshop was very entertaining and enlightening while at the same time being informative. I particularly liked how different media formats where used to get the overall message of positive thinking across to use the attendees.
I forgot to bring a cup for tea but during the break not only did i find a cup but thanks to the birthday girls there was also cake very palatable(always wanted to use that word;)) i must say.

but sadly ,like all fun things, it had to come to an end and we had to go back to our respective "offices" and get back to work. today i looked at virtual spaces and research again. here are the results.....

This paper reports on a research project that tested the community building process. Inearly 2008 a collaborativemeeting of professionalswith interests inGeographical Educationwas organised by the University of Waikato. The intention was to explore the construction of a “community” of interest among a group of collegial professionals. The meeting was held in a remote rural retreat that had one key facility: broadband wireless Internet access.
In the contemporary research environment, the tools that support collaborative researchare important. At the lowest level, email, portals and Web-hosting of research projectscan make a difference, but virtual research environments may well be more productive,assuming the participants have an access to appropriate technology. In virtual collaboration,the construction of a communicating group is the first step. The process starts with theidentification of the key group members, and then some evaluation of how such a team cancollaborate effectively. Two central matters need to be addressed. The most important of these is agreed principles of a community of practice, but this agreement is premised on a second matter, a sound technology base.

In a face-to-face meeting three facilitators led the community building using presentations on the practice, technology and policy environments for communities of practice in education. While face-to-face construction of the community was important a key outcome was the building of community confidence in longer virtual communities.For this particular study Moodle software was used as a support platform for the virtual community.Broadband wireless connections meant that it was quite possible for participants to collaborate through the Internet. Moodle was an effective platform, but had the well-known limit of asynchronous communication. Face-to-face virtual meetings were demonstrated during the session, but the organisation did not have the capacity to do synchronous, multi-party, virtual meetings. The community of practice is the design model for the New Zealand Ministry of Education in-service training provision (Lai, Pratt, Anderson, & Stigter, 2006).

The bandwidth required to support multicast virtual research meetings (100 MB/s minimum to the desktop) is available for some desktop users and well within the capacity of the high-speed links provided between significant nodes in research institutions(REANNZ, 2008).
The paper now advances the model developed at the University ofWaikato as an illustrative example of virtual research collaboration
At the University of Waikato there are a number of research forums that operate usingAccess Grid, the chosen multicasting platform supported over the national high-speed network. A GIS research seminar provides the basis for a commentary on the effectiveness of the technology. The seminar presented by Lars Brabyn was recorded in the native Access Grid format. It was replayed and analysed for communication/responsiveness of the participants. However, for discussion a .avi record is more effective (although more than twice the size of the native format file).
Figure 1 shows 9 of the 13 video streams that were broadcast on the day of the research seminar. There was participation from five university sites in New Zealand (Victoria, Canterbury, Lincoln, Auckland and Otago), and a shared PowerPoint broadcast supported the presenter.
The technology supporting the research seminarworked well, although the conventional seminar format of the audience was not very engaging. When questions were asked, the audience interest was discernably greater. Camera angles and field of view were adjustable, but system operators did not seek optimal capture and display shots.

The format replicated that of a seminar series; the speaker was expected to, and did, hold the floor for most ofthe meeting. In a research meeting, even with the same number of participants, the formatwould probably be rather different.
Effective interaction, minimising the cost and inconvenience of travel by spatially distributedparticipants is the goal of multicast or virtual communities, whether these aredeveloped for in-service professional development or for research. Communication acrosstime zones is an issue for international collaboration, but is not a national issue. Currently,the major impediment is the number of nodes, but (as Figure 1 shows) it is both cost-effective and technically possible to use Access Grid from the desktop, albeit from outside the institutional firewall.

In conclusion improved bandwidth availability and improved desktop computing will complete the transformation to fulfilling expectations of using the internet to create significant collaborations that cuts across institutional boundaries.
Virtual communities (Wenger et al., 2002), whether for professional developmentin Geographical Education or in research in Geography (GIS on AccessGrid), provide the necessary organisational framework.

Institutional boundaries need to be submerged, with these case studies showinghow virtual communities can deliver in-service professional development of teachers ofGeography or effective research collaboration. The international boundaries are also as restrictive, however there are agencies and projects in place that promote transnational approaches to virtual communities. Solem et al.(2003) have shown the international outreach of the Association of American Geographers,Herodot (2008) builds virtual communities in Europe and the IGU Commission on GeographicalEducation (2008) also has a role to play. Collaborations of this nature were initially built around research teams with a small amount of people but presentations in virtual spaces and using multicast in the conduct of Commission business are concepts we can now take seriously

monday 21 june

Today i most importantly most probably upset my group members and everyone else. i would like to apologise. I am trying to make back the time starting with this study on the effectiveness of virtual teams particulartly dyad structured teams. This is to look at ways of optimizing use of virtual spaces beyond technical boundaries

Team Structure and Research in Virtual Environment
In looking at ways to optimize use of virtual spaces in research we came across a study by IIsik University and Old dominion University. The study was on the effectiveness of virtual teams using dyadic teams.

Definition of Virtual Teams
"Virtual teams are small work/project teams that are geographically dispersed and collaborate via computer-mediated technology, predominantly over the Internet, with a potential face-to-face initiation in order to work for a specific purpose and/or specific piece of work. It is possible that they may or may not
have worked together before, and they may or may not see each other again after the work is completed" (Gamze Karayaz & Charles B. Keating2: 2007)

Overview of dyadic structures
To understand the purpose of the research on has to grasp the nature of dyad structures.
Dyads can be found in a spectrum of relationships including the personal level such as parent-child, husband-wife, or in the professional level such as boss-employee, and teacherstudent. When two people get together, they form a dyad (Gamze Karayaz & Charles B. Keating2: 2007).

Most research that that has been done on dyads has been on emotional levels in intense relationships such as marriages, in terms of team structuring dyadic structures has been ignored.

In a study that investigated managerial communication patterns analyzing past studies, [22] observed that forty percent of all meeting time in organizations is spent in dyadic communications. Similar to these results, [18] found that
in one of the subject companies, most relationships in virtualteams were managed as dyads even though he did not delineate any specific structuration directions. It appears that dyadic communications plays a significant role in
organizational structure. (Gamze Karayaz & Charles B. Keating2: 2007)

The study we are reviewing considered dyadic teams as an exceptional team structure that may have an essential impact on the effectiveness of virtual teams. For the purpose of this research, a virtual dyadic team is defined as a two person-structured teams working on a particular task in a virtual collaborative environment.
Dyads have been said to be fragile in comparison to Large teams due to the fact that it only takes one members withdrawal for the structure to die and performance deteriorates. However a well working dyad can result in enhanced levels of performance. Studies have shown however that dyads are more capable of focusing on a task than large groups thus it avoids the issue that large groups have to deal with of becoming sidelined.

Research Questions
This research seeks the answer to four questions of virtual team effectiveness on task performance, communication frequency, and team satisfaction. It
investigates the effectiveness of dyad structured approach in virtual environments to answer the following questions:
1) How does a dyad structure influence virtual team performance?
2) What is the impact of a dyad structure on virtual team effectiveness with respect to task outcome?
3) What is the impact of a dyad structure on virtual team effectiveness with respect to team satisfaction?
4) What is the impact of dyadic communication on virtual team effectiveness in terms of reducing the overflow communication?

Research results
1. Task performance
The experiment results indicated that dyadic teams performed better than four-person teams. This conclusion was established from the results of task performance (correct decision). However, significant results did not emerge from statistical analysis. This was contrary to initial expectations.
However there is weak statistical evidence that dyads are better in task decision but better performance was achieved
The statistical results led us to conclude that there is weak evidence to claim that dyads are better in task decision. . Although the number of correct decisions was more in dyadic teams, comparing the six correct decisionsfrom dyadic teams with the four correct decisions from selfstructuredteams was not a sufficient difference necessary to establish the statistical argument of significance. Although it was encouraging to see that the dyadic structured teams did in fact come to the correct decision with greater frequency, the fact remains that the statistically significant difference was not supported.

2. Satisfaction: task Outcomes and Team Satisfaction
One of the important findings from this research was that dyadic teams were satisfied with the task outcome, but they were not satisfied with being a member of a dyadic team.
This can be explained again using the fragile nature of dyads. One member of a dyad has a big effect on the other thus any negative influence will have a big difference to the team. The potential for dissatisfaction in a dyad is much higher than in the other team structures.
The results of this study indicated that dyadic structured teams could perform better than self-structured teams. This finding opens the door for more structuration studies in virtual teams to further understand phenomena associated with their effectiveness. (Gamze Karayaz & Charles B. Keating2: 2007).

3. Data Communication
The results indicate that dyadic teams achieved better results with less communication. Communication frequency was found to be a significant factor depending on team type.
The significant evidence supported the relationship between team type and communication frequency. This finding has direct implications for global managers due to: 1) finding that reduction in the total amount of communication using dyadicteams can be accomplished without sacrificing the work results, and 2) consequently, there is the potential to decrease costs associated with excessive communication. Exploring the implications further, there are potential advantages to be gained in the utilization of dyadic teams invirtual environments. (Gamze Karayaz & Charles B. Keating2: 2007).
If dyadic structures are as effective as other team structures with fewer communication requirements it stands to reason that dyads structures use less resources in the form of time and technology that would have originally been spent communicating. With better structuring successful teams with fewer resource requirements will emerge. The benefits for cost effectiveness brought on by dyads have been realised and further exploration is underway
1. Analysis of interest: Task structure
According to the research results 7.41% of the members in self-structured teams reported that they were insufficient in task planning while none of the dyad teams responded similarly. This inability to sufficiently plan tasks by self-structered teams may explain why dyad teams performed tasks better.

2. Analysis ofinterest: Social structures
In this study no attempt was made to have teams engage in social or informal relationships. A survey asked to determine whether teams spend time on social relationships indicated that 50% of both team structure types did not spend time socializing. In cases where an individual may require social attention this may present a problem. Hence why one global member during the research reported "There were no social interactions besides the task. This was somewhat disappointing....."

Conclusion
The study has shown that dyad structures could have significant advantages for companies that utilize them. One such advantage being the reduction of the cost for communication while maintaining performance. This reduction in communication activity allows for more time to be spent on the task at hand.Dyads biggest weakness is that it is fragile. With further research or utilization methods can be developed to maintain a good relationship between members of a dyad team. I think the CSIR will do well to invest in dyad teams because performance can get better and costs reduced.

Again i am sorry.

thursday

toughest day yet

learned about library 2.0 and it related terms library user 2.0 and librarian 2.
0 and also looked at web 2.0 which library 2.0 is intergrated with.

Day two

Today was a better day looking at the battle against procrastination. Managed to get quiet a bit of work done but before i get into the findings just want to look at the process.

We had internet this time around( hurray bluelab) so we were able to start work immediately. Just that this time around a new challenge presented itself which was to stay focused on qualitative sources of information and not to go look for information on sites like ww.facebook.com ;-). Told myself i would not go into such sites until work was complete. did it work? keep reading.....

First the blogs were connected to the wiki and the first posts were made. The work for the day was split up between the group members, i was assigned the task of defining the concepts web 2.0, social media and library 2.0 . Before doing any work i looked through a pdf on referencing in an atttempt to do everything right all the way. Learned how to use proper web page referencing technique which is where a bulk of my information came from. I downloaded a few pdf files aswell wasnt sure if i should reference the website that i got them from or the pdf only but then how does one reference a pdf?

I tried to get information from as many diferent places as possible just to learn how to. Instead of just normal google i looked in google scholar and went into the UP library to look through its e resources. Thought this would help gt more comprehensive information which at the end of the day i think it did.

So what is web 2.0? Web 2.0 is a term that is still debated today over its purpose but those who choose to define it say that it is a "version" of the web that has a user centered approach. Information doesnt flow in one direction like in web 1.0 but rather it goes both ways. Users have the freedom now to communicate and collaborate because they now get to play a part in content creation and management. web 2.0 centers around trust one could say because you leave your information out there to be accessed and also lots of people give out information so you now have to decide whether or not to value their opinions.

Social Media and Library 2.0 could be placed as bullets under components of web 2.0. Social Media is any instrument of social communication and in a web 2.0 context this is technologies that allow for users to interact such as websites for instance allow people to vote on their content or to post comment.
Library 2.0 is the integration of web 2.0 into the library environment which means incorparating that user driven approach into the library. This will be particularly helpful due to the fact that traditional library as we know it is being used less and less as people rely on the web for their information. a study was conducted in which students who worked off campus utilizing library 2.0 practices to do their work performed better than student swho used the traditional library on campus.

I realised late though that i had not given enough information in my efforts so more searches will be done and more indepth knowledge will be seeked. Did i beat the urge to go on facebook? find out on the next blog post....:)

monday 14 june

Monday 14 june 1st day of the experiential learning and we dont have internet in our office aka the csir tea room. We find out we have to go work on CAMPUS(that place we spent most of our time and now we get to go there while on holiday and stay there from 8am to 4pm). But wait there is a plan lets .... then... then... with the lan cable, we wait in anticipation and the solution works but fails to work completely im an optimist and sarcasm is fun so i start thinking to myself hurray! we going to the blue lab with the brown carpet as phyllis pointed out lol.

No internet but we still got work to do so we use what we have to meet deadlines for the day. It was interesting reading up on embedded librarianship. I particular liked the fact that an embedded librarian it seems is continously learning which is something i like doing. Basicaly an embedded liibrarian collaborates with a client to meet objectives and to make it easier for them to do so by helping them with their information needs, that is getting them relevent quality information, showing them how to get to information faster as well as managing information that needs to be stored making it discoverable and accessible.

ima miss being at the CSIR getting up early to go catch a taxi bringing my own cup for tea etc :) its the lil things that make the most difference.