B-AWARE: Awareness Systems for Enhancing Virtual Team Presence in Online Learning Environments

Awareness systems enhance a sense of presence for virtual collaborators to effectively perform their tasks online without face-to-face meetings. This session provides an overview of a study of activity awareness of virtual teams using a wiki. The study provides a background for presenting the historical foundation of awareness systems in online learning environments and contrasts these with today's daunting array of Web 2.0 tools. The presentation is focused on practical application in that the audience will benefit from the session to learn about the importance of awareness and awareness systems in online learning environments and how to apply theory and design concepts to practical use. The presenters will offer insights from higher education perspectives on how current awareness systems in Web 2.0 ecologies can be clarified from the theoretical, methodological, and design perspective. The goal is to build an audience awareness of awareness systems. In the context of using social media and Web 2.0, a framework (B-AWARE) will be presented that provides the best-of-breed awareness technologies that can be applied to increase student engagement, retention, and success in virtual team collaborations. The explosive growth and adoption of social media and Web 2.0 technologies (i.e. cloud computing) has altered the conventional landscape of awareness systems that are now competing for attention in online learning environments. One purpose of awareness systems is to filter information to virtual collaborators on demand or immediately and in meaningful ways. Another purpose is to enable users to increase their level of awareness of activities and/or tasks concurrently being performed in groups, i.e., effectively tracking the progress of ongoing activity. Examples of these awareness systems exist in Web 2.0 notification mechanisms, which can now apprise collaborators of activity through mechanisms such as e-mail, RSS, and SMS. With some awareness systems used in Web 2.0 collaborative technologies, the flow of information is often disruptive if activity flow is disorganized. Optimizing Web 2.0 technologies to increase awareness is important to provide stability and organization for virtual collaborators to manage their tasks and activities.