Virtual Environments: Is one life enough?

Sitearm Madonna shares his insights on teamwork with the class.

Sitearm Madonna joined the class this week to talk about teamwork and collaboration, both generally and virtually. His experience in the global oil industry and also in virtual worlds has enabled him to formulate a practical approach to collaboration which he supports with references to the vast amount of academic writing on the topic. As the graduate of the module who received one of the highest marks ever awarded he is well-positioned to understand your particular needs in working on the Team Project that will be introduced next week.

His developing interest in musical composition informed the opening of his presentation and he gave us a link to a YouTube video:

Sitearm went on to discuss the stages of a project and the roles required of the team members as the project work progresses towards completion. He asked for examples of good experiences of team work and poor examples and you had some great examples to share. The most common poor experiences were where one member tried to dominate and control the project, not letting others explore their contributions. Sitearm noted that where the dominator also has power and/or authority there is very little the other team members can do and the results of the project are going to fall very far short of the potential. The positive experiences were mostly concerned with successful brainstorming where the team relished new ideas and develop an approach that truly was better than any of the individual team members might have achieved on their own. You also noted that in a well-balanced team each person is supported in contributing according to their skill, leading to a satisfying experience for the whole team.

Sitearm also referred to the theory of persona. Speaking about the different personalities we might present in different social situations (eg, at home, in college, at work) and relating it to the avatars we use in SL, he suggested that the various roles that need to be filled for a successful team can be inhabited by any individual member – they are interchangeable and may be temporary – even though some people might be particularly suited to some roles. He also referred to the Greek origin of the term persona and how it relates to your purpose, asking you to consider ‘where your purposes come from?’ John reminded everyone that we will be picking up on this idea again in Class 16 when we look at virtual identities.

To conclude Sitearm told us about a recent paper he read suggesting that we all have 150 meaningful relationships in our lives. That breaks down into five people in our inner circle (family); 15 good friends; and 50 friends. It expands into 500 acquaintances and 1,500 people we can recognise. [This post was amended in December 2019 to include links to Dunbar’s Number in Wikipedia, Social Network Size in Humans by Hill and Dunbar 2003, and The Social Brain Hypothesis by Dunbar 1998.]

[Note: Sitearm Madonna has subsequently provided this edited video (47 minutes) of his presentation]

After thanking Sitearm for a most stimulating presentation, John directed you to Brightspace where the Team Project groups are listed. Here they are again.

You will work in these teams for the rest of the semester. John will introduce the Team Project in next week’s class.