Page 83 - Managing the Mobile Workforce

62 � mAnAgIng the moBIle workForCe

each other,” she said. “[But] people in Asian countries and also in Mo-
rocco, when I did my study there, are little bit hesitant to share their
photograph with people they don’t know.” So she didn’t ask them to
share pictures until after the academic activity was over. When she was
doing training in Sri Lanka, she asked people to choose an icon or im-
age that represented them rather than posting a picture. “They loved
the idea, because it gives them the freedom to express themselves. . . .
What happens is when you post a photograph the stereotypical notions
of the person get in the way of you being able to communicate.”
She teaches students all over the world, many of whom she never
meets, and they can develop into very close learning communities.
The trick is to get to know each other, and she uses online icebreakers,
introductory surveys, Web sites that feature pictures from different
countries, and other tools to reduce the distance—cultural,
geographical, hierarchical, structural, experiential, educational—
between people.
Making different kinds of media available for people to communi-
cate, she says, helps. E-mail, group conferencing, both asynchronous
and synchronous tools, audio and video and text, instant messaging,
and whatever can be made available gives people the opportunity
to use what they prefer and to move—if they choose—to the more
personal communications that build relationships, trust, and shared
support. “What I was realizing,” she said, about working with a Sri
Lankan organization, “was that few of them would ever say face to
face what they were saying online. The online medium actually broke
the barriers for them to be able to communicate with each other across
hierarchies—across power distance—as a learning participant. You
have to understand the culture in order to be able to facilitate that.”
Lani was curious to know if social presence also affects learner
satisfaction, so she, along with colleague Frank Zittle in one of her
earlier studies, asked students participating in an interuniversity vir-
tual conference how factors, such as social interaction, having a sense
of an online community, being comfortable conversing, having the
ability to form individual impressions of other participants, the per-
sonableness of the online discussions, and the moderation style, were