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Cherchiglia et al. Effects of ESM Use for Classroom Teams Proceedings of the Nineteenth Annual Pre-ICIS Workshop on HCI Research in MIS, Virtual Conference, December 12, 2020 1
An Exploration of the Effects of Enterprise Social Media
Use for Classroom Teams
Leticia Cherchiglia Michigan State
University leticia@msu.edu
Wietske Van Osch HEC Montreal & Michigan
State University wietske.van-osch@hec.ca
Yuyang Liang Michigan State
University liangyuy@msu.edu
Elisavet Averkiadi Michigan State
University averkiad@msu.edu
ABSTRACT
This paper explores the adoption of Microsoft Teams, a
group-based Enterprise Social Media (ESM) tool, in the
context of a hybrid Information Technology Management
undergraduate course from a large midwestern university.
With the primary goal of providing insights into the use and
design of tools for group-based educational settings, we
constructed a model to reflect our expectations that core
ESM affordances would enhance students’ perceptions of
Microsoft Teams’ functionality and efficiency, which in
turn would increase both students’ perceptions of group
productivity and students’ actual usage of Microsoft Teams
for communication purposes. In our model we used three
core ESM affordances from Treem and Leonardi (2013),
namely editability (i.e., information can be created and/or
edited after creation, usually in a collaborative fashion),
persistence (i.e., information is stored permanently), and
visibility (i.e., information is visible to other users). Analysis of quantitative (surveys, server-side; N=62) and
qualitative (interviews; N=7) data led to intriguing results.
It seems that although students considered that editability,
persistency, and visibility affordances within Microsoft
Teams were convenient functions of this ESM, problems
when working collaboratively (such as connectivity,
formatting, and searching glitches) might have prevented
considerations of this ESM as fast and user-friendly (i.e.,
efficient). Moreover, although perceived functionality and
efficiency were positively connected to group productivity,
hidden/non-intuitive communication features within this
ESM might help explain the surprising negative connection
between efficiency and usage of this ESM for the purpose
of group communication. Another explanation is that,
given the plethora of competing tools specifically designed
to afford seamless/optimal team communication, students
preferred to use more familiar tools or tools perceived as
more efficient for group communication than Microsoft
Teams, a finding consistent with findings in organizational
settings (Van Osch, Steinfield, and Balogh, 2015). Beyond theoretical contributions related to the impact that
ESM affordances have on users’ interaction perceptions,
and the impact of users’ interaction perceptions on team
and system outcomes, from a strategic and practical point
of view, our findings revealed several challenges for the
use of Microsoft Teams (and perhaps ESM at large) in
educational settings: 1) As the demand for online education
grows, collaborative tools such as Microsoft Teams should
strive to provide seamless experiences for multiple-user
access to files and messages; 2) Microsoft Teams should
improve its visual design in order to increase ease of use,
user familiarity, and intuitiveness; 3) Microsoft Teams
appears to have a high-learning curve, partially related to
the fact that some features are hidden or take extra
steps/clicks to be accessed, thus undermining their use; 4)
Team communication is a complex topic which should be
further studied because, given the choice, students will fall
upon familiar tools therefore undermining the full potential
for team collaboration through the ESM. We expect that this paper can provide insights for
educators faced with the choice for an ESM tool best-suited
for group-based classroom settings, as well as designers
interested in adapting ESMs to educational contexts, which
is a promising avenue for market expansion.
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