COMSIC (Collaboration Competencies in Media Supported Intercultural Workgroups)
The COMSIC Project
COMSIC deals with the fastest developing collaboration unit in the globalizing world of work. It is the first empirical project in educational science to deal with this type of cooperation. COMSIC has its focus on the requirements and the development of competencies needed to succeed in facilitating and leading virtual teams.
These are distinct from those in traditional face to face teams not only with respect to technical and social needs but also in their more probable intercultural or transcultural setting.
Definition and development of these competencies is a genuine educational science field with proximity to organizational psychology and human resources management. The approach is definitely competency oriented, not running out in just teaching coordination techniques.
One new perspective is to apply educational science results not only on educational settings to seek success in the vocational field but to integrate them directly into efficiency oriented working teams. Another new feature in the project is to focus on the facilitator or manager, whose coordinative role is, although altered from traditional settings, crucial for team success.
Fields of actual research and application are:
- Integration of global responsibility into management behaviour
- Success in virtual collaboration
- Stakeholder view on virtual collaboration as a usual collaboration technique
Theses resulting from the project:
- Anna Birkle/Katharina Gilarski (2010): “Globales Lernen in den Medien. Eine Diskursanalyse.” (Global Learning in Mass Media. A Discourse Analysis.)
- Jessica Neureuther (2010): “Kompetenzprofil und Kompetenzentwicklungsbedarf von Führungskräften zur Führung virtueller Teams. Eine empirische Untersuchung.“ (Competence profiles and competence development requirements of managers for leading virtual teams. An empirical study.)
The COMSIC Team
Team Leaders
Research Assistants
Jana Ursula Jermolinski
Ursula Pillmann
Claudia Helga Behrendt
Hannu Willi Sparwald
News
December 2010: Wick, A./Mitschke, R.: From Abstract Personal Values of Global Responsibility to Concrete Work Settings: The COMSIC Project (Vienna, Austria Termnet Publisher)
2nd June 2010: at "Workshops at Diversity and Global Understanding" Workshop on "Global Education - the COMSIC project"
April 2010 - Februar 2011: Initial Funding by the Research Pool Heidelberg University
November 2009: Wick, A./Dauner, B. A. /Mitschke, R. (2009): Globales Lernen in medial vermittelten Arbeitsgruppen. In: ZEP, 32, 2009, 3, S. 14-18.
