Abstract:

Business schools keen on preparing graduates for success in a global working environment are turning to alternative classroom approaches especially as the COVID-19 pandemic presents potentially permanent changes to virtual work. Global virtual team projects reflect a change in teaching methods wherein instructors involve their students in virtual classroom collaborations with peers all across the globe. These activities provide a very broad set of advantages, including the development of self-efficacy skills, increasing intercultural competencies, and building future success in online coursework.

The issues impacting student performance in online courses are multidimensional. Social isolation has been a historical issue, impacting student success in online education as has computer-related anxiety). Self-efficacy mediates the relationship between computer anxiety and perceived ease of use of online courses. As instructional policies in response to COVID-19 shifted the Spring 2020 semester to fully online learning, this presented an opportunity to examine the role of a virtual team project as a behavioral intervention to reduce online learning anxiety and improve student self-efficacy in an online course.

The project involved undergraduate students at two universities, one in the United States and one in Germany, who were randomly mixed into virtual project teams to complete a four-week assignment. In teams of 4-6 members, students collaboratively conducted research and produced a strategic marketing plan. Students were given a prescriptive plan of tasks to complete as a group over the time-period and were required to use virtual collaboration technology such as Slack and Zoom. The deliverables included voice-over powerpoint presentations and reflective papers on their team project experience. Students were surveyed before and after the project (intervention) to gauge their attitudes related to COVID-19, intercultural competence as well as computer self-efficacy, computer-related anxiety, and perceived ease-of-use of the online course.

Our primary research question concerned whether a global virtual teams learning experience can mitigate student feelings of anxiety in distance education. In addition, we investigated whether such an experience can also reduce the student’s overall anxiety related to the COVID-19 pandemic and increase feelings of self-efficacy, which may lead to enhanced perception of the course. Our data analysis is still underway. However, through comparing results of the sample means before and after the intervention, changes are visible including decreased COVID19 anxiety and decreased computer anxiety, while perceived ease of use of the course increased. Computer self-efficacy also increased as well as several areas of intercultural competence.

Keywords:

COVID-19, global virtual teams projects, online learning anxiety, student self-efficacy.