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Challenges of tool mediation in a
virtual project management course
in a higher education
Kari Kosonen, Sami Paavola, Seppo Toikka, Hanni
Muukkonen

Käyttäytymis-tieteellinen tiedekunta / Henkilön nimi
/ Esityksen nimi www.helsinki.fi/yliopisto 19.12.2011 1

The context of the study

o The second iteration of a research case in the
Knowledge Practice Laboratory –project
o The study explored how the shared artifacts of the
virtual environment used in the investigated
educational setting helped the student to organize
and rehearse knowledge practices of virtual project
management.

Käyttäytymistieteiden laitos / Henkilön nimi /
Esityksen nimi www.helsinki.fi/yliopisto 19.12.2011 2

Investigated educational setting

o A course with title “Advanced Themes on Project
Management”
o The course was optional and was taken by 4th year students
from several different programmes including Educational
Science, Economics, Information and Service Management,
Cognitive Science and Psychology.
o The students (approximately 30) from three training
programs students were asked to develop new working and
research projects for the representatives of the Finnish Tax
Administration
o The course a practical way of learning virtual project
management practices (managing subcontracting network,
team building, dividing responsibilities , using collaboration
technology)

Virtual environment

o A virtual collaboration tool Knowledge Practice
Environment (KPE) developed in Knowledge Practice
Laboratory Project served as the virtual environment of
the course
o KPE has been designed to support collaborative
knowledge creation in flexible ways.
o It provides various tools and functionalities for reflective
and "object-centered" knowledge practices, such as
planning epistemic processes, producing texts and
notes, organizing collaboration of groups of people
around knowledge objects
o Three views of shared working space can be used in
organizing work on knowledge objects
Process view Content view Community view


The main course space was structured around
the tasks named according to the four phases
of the project work

Content
view

The course instructors uploaded into the space two content
specific guiding templates, a research plan template and a
template with so called SCRUM-questions meant for reflecting
activities in Project Manager’s Diary

Theoretical framework of the
study
The phenomenon of tool mediation is approached from the
perspective of its four types distinguished by Rabardel
• Epistemic
Enabling actors to create, transform and organize shared
knowledge objects
• Pragmatic
Enabling actors to plan and monitor their activities
• Social
Enabling actors to maintain contacts and mutual awareness
• Reflective
Enabling actors to reflect on and evaluate undertaken
activities


Purpose of the study

Research questions:_
 How did a group of students participating in a
project based course setting utilized the
functionalities of the virtual environment and how
did the use mediate the epistemic practices
characterizing project based working settings ?

 What kind of strengths and weaknesses of tool
mediation did the participants experience?


Method

 Participants:
• Five students, four Economist trainees and one Psychologist
trainee working in one team.
• The team worked on the development of a survey method for
collecting data about initial attitudes towards tax-paying and
related interventional approaches for transforming these
attitudes.
 Collected data:
the participants' answers to reflective questions, the content items
created by the team members, a team interview
 Data analysis:
Functional classification of the used artifacts, qualitative analysis
of the content of the interviews

Collected data

 The content-items
created by the team-
members in the shared
space of the team

 Interviews of two team-
members (M 1, M 3)
based on the use of
stimulated recall-method

In the interviews the team-members were asked to tell about the
items and their purposes. In addition they were asked separately
about the a)purpose of the most frequently used item the chat-
room b) the other available tools (besides KPE) they would have
used for various purposes if they had been given a choice

Data-analysis: a)Creation of analytical
cateogories on the basis of the preliminary
exploration of the created items
Created seven categories for classifying the functions of the
artifacts:
1. Brainstorming/scetching;
Criterion: An item was used jointly mainly in creating ideas
or in scetching preliminary content
2. Sharing/reviewing literature
Criterion: An item was used in sharing or reviewing literature
3. Creating intermediate content
Criterion: An item was created as intermediate elaboration or
an element used as a part of final content
4. Revising final content
Criterion: An item was the version of the final content


Data-analysis a)
Analytical categories 5-7

5. Defining tasks and responsibilities
Criterion: An item was used mainly in defining or
allocating tasks
6. Negotiating/sharing operative information
Criterion: An item was used mainly in informing others and
sharing operative information
7. Reflecting on activities
Criterion: An item was used mainly in reflecting on
undertaken and planned activities


Data-analysis b) Analytical
procedure
 The content items of the investigated team-space were
classified according to the analytical categories.

 The interview data was split into n sequences the
duration of which ranged from 20 to 90 seconds.

 The sequences were scored into the analytical categories
according to the main content of the interviewees’
descriptions

 References to alternative tools were scored separately


Results: Overview of findings
Category Scored items from the Scored
team space sequences from
the interviews
1.Brainstorming 2 notes -
/scetching
2.Sharing/reviewing literature 2 notes, 7 files 2
3. Creating intermediate content 12 files 2

4. Revising final content 7 files 4 (2 alternative
tools referred to)
5. Defining tasks and 7 task items, 4 notes, 2 7
responsibilities files
7. Negotiating/ 1 chat item 7 (2 alternative
sharing operative information tools referred to)
6.Reflecting on activities 4 notes 2


1. Brainstorming /scetching

M1

M2

M3 M4

M4


2. Representing and reviewing literature
and other knowledge resources

Uploaded
research papers

The interviewees described how the team
members shared research papers in the content
view and reviewed their content bearing
Käyttäytymistieteiden laitos / the project of the team.
relavancy to Henkilön nimi /

3. Creating intermediate content

According to M 3 the content items scored as intermediate
content were created by the members individually as their
contributions for the researh plan. M 1 commented positively on
the visibility of the relation between the documents and tasks.


4. Revising final content

Jointly created scetch
of the research plan

Consecutive versions (7 word
files)) of the final research plan

Both interviewees regarded the versioning in separate uploaded files as problematic
and said that would have liked to have an opportunity to edit texts inside the items.
Google docs and WIKI were referred to as alternative tools. However M 3 stated
that a shift to the Googledocs would have been cumbersome because the team had
already scetched the reseach plan with the template (provided by the instructors
and copypastedKäyttäytymistieteiden laitosin a note/ with which it started to scetch the research
by the team / Henkilön nimi
plan). Esityksen nimi www.helsinki.fi/yliopisto 19.12.2011 17

5. Defining tasks and
responsibilities
Process view
Created task-
item

Content view

Dividing responsibilities to the team members

M5

M4

M 1 described how the team tried at the beginning to outline tasks with Chant
chart in the process view but ended up with dividing responsibilities in the
notes in the content view . M 3 described the relation between the created
tasks and phases of project outlined by the instructors. Both interviewees
regarded KPE as a tool suitable /to be used in managing the joint tasks, but
Käyttäytymistieteiden laitos / Henkilön nimi
M 3 would have liked the phases to be more clearly pre-structured.

6. Negotiating and sharing
operative information (chat-item)

M1

M3

Chat –item was used in sharing instant messages (M 3)and in negotiating (M 1).
M 3 stated that checked regularly the chat item in logging into KPE to see
others’ possible messages. M 1 stated that big decisions (like research
questions) were made very quickly in chatting and longer discussions would
have been necessary. M 1 suggested the use of virtual meeting tools to others.
M 3 mentioned Facebook as an nimi /
Käyttäytymistieteiden laitos / Henkilön
Esityksen nimi
alternative tool for the purpose.
www.helsinki.fi/yliopisto 19.12.2011 19

7. Reflecting on activities

M5

M1

According to M 1 the team used Scrum-questions weekly to
gather answers from each member for accumulating the
content of the project managers’ diaries

Discussion

o The findings indicate that the tool mediation was
realized by means of both technical and cultural
tools that the investigated team was provided with

o Such cultural tools as the templates and the phase
structure of project work provided by the instructor
functioned as action templates (Stetsenko ) that
higlihted some content specific practices and related
use of technology


Discussion: Usage of the
functionalities and tool mediation

o Epistemic mediation was realized through
 using the note editor and project plan template in
brainstorming initial ideas of the project and in schetching
the project plan
 reviewing literature with note editor and sharing research
papers in the content view
 sharing the intermediate content created by the team
members with Power point and Word in the content view
 sharing the subsequent versions of the research plan
created by team members with Word in the content view


Discussion: Usage of the functionalities and
tool mediation

o Pragmatic mediation was realized through
 creating task items partially according to the process model
provided by the instructors
 deviding responsibilities to team-members in task allocation
notes
 linking the content items (for instance created intermediate
content and research papers) to the tasks that they were
related to
o Social mediation was realized through
 Using regularly the chatting item
o Reflective mediation was realized through
 answering to the reflective Scrum-questions to accumulate
the weekly content of the project management diary


Discussion: Perceived strengths
and weaknesses of tool mediation

 The opportunity to visually explicate the relation
between the tasks and documents (epistemic and
pragmatic mediation by means of the technical tool)
was regarded as useful feature

 The KPE was viewed to support particularly the task
management (pragmatic mediation by means of
technical tool)


Discussion: Perceived strengths
and weaknesses of tool mediation

 The technical tools (notes and separate word-files used in
the development of research plan) did not provide sufficient
mediatory continuity for the process through which the
initially brainstormed ideas were converted into the research
plan. (Epistemic mediation by means of technical tool)
 The process model of project work should have been more
clearly pre-stuctured in the environment (Pragmatic
mediation by means of cultural tools )
 Chatting tool did not sufficiently afford the team members
engagement on dicussions on the encountered problems
and challenged that required thorough reflections (Social
mediation by means of technical tool)


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