Thinking about exploratory work and team adaptation

January 16, 2018

I was once considered a hardcore raider. I played a warrior tank in vanilla WoW. The guild in which I was a member was the number 1 guild on my server. However, raiding back then was a lot different than it is now. Hardcore raiding involved 40 people. We spent weeks learning and adapting our playstyles to down a single boss. It took a couple of months to clear Molten Core and Black Wing Lair.

Choosing the study design

January 15, 2018

Why look at a raiding guild in World of Warcraft? The challenges that exist in end-game raiding encounters are challenging. Few guilds can take on the level of dedication needed to be rated among the best in the world.

Vituality in Virtual Teams

October 28, 2017

Virtuality is an important characteristic of virtual teams. Virtuality describes the distance between team members and the level of reliance on technology platforms to do work. Virtuality does impact team outcomes and can be influenced by team members' skill with particular platforms and the routines that organize the use of such platforms.

For more on information on virtuality see:

Foster, M. K., Abbey, A., Callow, M. A., Zu, X., & Wilbon, A. D. (2015). Rethinking virtuality and its impact on teams.... Small Group Research, 46(3), 267-299. doi:10.1177/1046496415573795

Honing my problem statement

October 23, 2017

My current problem statement is: It is not known how swift trust influences how temporary virtual team members adapt to disruptions.

The themes coming out of this problem statement are temporary groups, virtual teams, team adaptation, and swift trust. Dr. Cook is challenging how swift trust ties into the need. I think he's right in this regard. I went back to the literature but I can’t tie swift trust specifically to the need.

Using the Internet for social/behavioral research

March 20, 2017

I intend to use video gamers in my study. I plan to observe their behavior within a virtual world. The more I dig into the concepts of confidentiality and research ethics, the more I have to ensure the privacy and confidentiality of my participants are maintained.