A grounded theory approach to effects of virtual facilitation on team communication and the development of professional skills

This article reports on a grounded theory study into the effects of virtual facilitation on team communication, a critical professional skill for engineering students. Facilitation may assist in that process because it encourages information sharing in order to promote effective teamwork. To aid in online team communications, a virtual facilitator has been developed. This research involves a quasi-experimental study of 40 community college students working on group projects. The students were sorted into treatment and control groups, and asked to work in an online forum designed for team collaboration. In the control group, the virtual facilitator was programmed to remain inactive. For teams in the treatment group, the virtual facilitator intervened with prompts when it was triggered by certain keywords and phrases. Using the grounded theory approach, researchers reviewed and analyzed transcripts to find themes and patterns, which were then coded. In addition, researchers explored communication differences between control and treatment groups.