Developing Teams by Visualizing Their Communication Structures in Online Meetings
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The article is relevant to the mission of the journal, as I consider it very pertinent as it contributes to the field of knowledge in relation to improving communication in online collaboration.
The abstract of the article is adequate and briefly explains the content of the study conducted.
The keywords are appropriate.
The topic of the article "Developing Teams by Visualising their Communication Structures in Online Meetings" corresponds to the content of the paper.
The document is well structured, facilitating the understanding of the study. The theoretical background is based on the research questions, providing current and new literature in relation to the objective of the study "improving team communication" and the three research questions proposed, as well as the propositions put forward.
Objective: The research problem and the objective of the study are well defined. As well as the 3 research questions posed.
Method: the methodology used based on a multiple case study (3 cases) is appropriate to the study problem. In relation to the data collection instruments (video recordings) and subsequent quantitative and qualitative analysis, they are well specified and commented on.
The sample is clearly defined through the organisations participating in the study.
The research phases are presented in a clear and structured way, and Figure 1, which shows the four phases of the study and the most important moments, is very useful. This facilitates the reader's understanding.
Results: This evaluator considers that the results shown in terms of the study problem are relevant and adequately presented, as well as the discussion of these results.
I consider that the author should comment on the possible lines of research opened up by his study.
In short, I consider that this is a good work that will contribute to the advancement of knowledge in relation to the aspects to be considered in the improvement of communication as a basis for the collaboration of the respective teams.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
thank you very much for your very constructive Feedback! With regard to your suggestion to comment on the possible lines of research opened up by his study, we have added several ideas in the conclusion section.
The introduction has been restructured following the first suggestion
Kind Regards,
The authors
Reviewer 2 Report
Pros:
- the study addresses a valid and up-to-date problem
- the proposed solution is original and interesting
- the research method is adequate and clearly described
Cons (see below for detailed comments):
- the introduction does not provide a clear understanding of the benefits from the proposed method
- the related work section ignores the prior work on communication visualization
- there are many technical errors in the manuscript
Re: 1.1. Purpose and approach of this research
I am missing an explicit statement of the benefits of the proposed method in this section (because of its title).
All we have here is that "the tool and the method (...) aims to improve team online collaboration. It does so by analyzing and visualizing patterns of communication."
But how does analyzing and visualizing improve team online collaboration?
Some details are provided only in the subsequent section:
"The approach examined in this analysis seeks to make teams more aware of the unwritten rules of their communication by helping them to discern constructive and less constructive patterns in their communication."
But that section is titled "Theoretical foundation", so it is not where one should look to find what the proposed method is for.
Therefore, I suggest restructuring the sections 1.1 and 1.2, moving what concerns the proposed method to 1.1 and leaving theory in 1.2, or, in my opinion a solution leading to an even clearer structure, but requiring more effort from the authors, making 1.1 only an introduction to the problem, leaving theory in 1.2, and presenting your approach in 1.3.
Re: 2. Related Work
A lot is written about prior work on SNA, but the topic of the paper is team communication visualization, and I am afraid there is not a single reference relevant to this key aspect of the study.
And there is some prior work on communication visualization, see, e.g.:
- https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Identifying-Structures-in-Team-Communication-Using-McComb-Kennedy/c7dbf1b0c4a1667d1fd0bc03335bd818a92822aa
- https://aisel.aisnet.org/isd2014/proceedings2021/currenttopics/19/
- https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1046496420904126
- http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07421222.2003.11045742
- chapter 4 (esp. Fig 4.3) in https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-36159-4
Re: 8. Conclusions
This supports the hypothesis
-> Probably, but there was no such hypothesis stated anywhere earlier in the paper
Please take note that whatever you promise your method is expected to achieve in the introduction should be referred to in the conclusions. There is a bit of discrepancy now:
- Introduction: "The approach examined in this analysis seeks to make teams more aware of the unwritten rules of their communication by helping them to discern constructive and less constructive patterns in their communication."
- Conclusions: "team members identified aspects of their roles and their interactions (...) they could find concrete ideas on how to improve their collaboration".
Covid-19
-> COVID-19 (all capital letters) is the spelling used internationally by scientific and medical professionals
The research is based on the following propositions:
-> there is no comma, dot, or whatever else at the end of each proposition
*The* approach
-> the bold font is for no use
Error! Reference source not found
-> correct the errors
WEIGHT OF RELATION 48,75
-> use decimal points instead of commas
WEIGHT OF RELATION
RELATION P1-P2
-> there is no point in repeating the RELATION word in every row, P1-P2,... would suffice
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
thank you very much for the detailled review and the constructive feedback! Your suggestions it has greatly contributed to the quality of the research. Particularly the first two suggestions made us think deeper about structure and scope of the paper.
Pros:
- the study addresses a valid and up-to-date problem
- the proposed solution is original and interesting
- the research method is adequate and clearly described
Cons (see below for detailed comments):
- the introduction does not provide a clear understanding of the benefits from the proposed method
- the related work section ignores the prior work on communication visualization
- there are many technical errors in the manuscript
Re: 1.1. Purpose and approach of this research
I am missing an explicit statement of the benefits of the proposed method in this section (because of its title).
All we have here is that "the tool and the method (...) aims to improve team online collaboration. It does so by analyzing and visualizing patterns of communication."
But how does analyzing and visualizing improve team online collaboration?
Some details are provided only in the subsequent section:
"The approach examined in this analysis seeks to make teams more aware of the unwritten rules of their communication by helping them to discern constructive and less constructive patterns in their communication."
But that section is titled "Theoretical foundation", so it is not where one should look to find what the proposed method is for.
Therefore, I suggest restructuring the sections 1.1 and 1.2, moving what concerns the proposed method to 1.1 and leaving theory in 1.2, or, in my opinion a solution leading to an even clearer structure, but requiring more effort from the authors, making 1.1 only an introduction to the problem, leaving theory in 1.2, and presenting your approach in 1.3.
Reply: the introduction has been restructured following the first suggestion
Re: 2. Related Work
A lot is written about prior work on SNA, but the topic of the paper is team communication visualization, and I am afraid there is not a single reference relevant to this key aspect of the study.
And there is some prior work on communication visualization, see, e.g.:- https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Identifying-Structures-in-Team-Communication-Using-McComb-Kennedy/c7dbf1b0c4a1667d1fd0bc03335bd818a92822aa
- https://aisel.aisnet.org/isd2014/proceedings2021/currenttopics/19/
- https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1046496420904126
- http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07421222.2003.11045742
- chapter 4 (esp. Fig 4.3) in https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-36159-4
Reply: now there are three references regarding the visualization of communication in the paper
Re: 8. Conclusions
This supports the hypothesis
-> Probably, but there was no such hypothesis stated anywhere earlier in the paper
Please take note that whatever you promise your method is expected to achieve in the introduction should be referred to in the conclusions. There is a bit of discrepancy now:
- Introduction: "The approach examined in this analysis seeks to make teams more aware of the unwritten rules of their communication by helping them to discern constructive and less constructive patterns in their communication."
- Conclusions: "team members identified aspects of their roles and their interactions (...) they could find concrete ideas on how to improve their collaboration".
Reply: both introduction and conclusions have been changed accordingly
Comments on the Quality of English LanguageCovid-19
-> COVID-19 (all capital letters) is the spelling used internationally by scientific and medical professionals.The research is based on the following propositions:
-> there is no comma, dot, or whatever else at the end of each proposition
*The* approach-> the bold font is for no use
Reply: all suggestions above are implemented
Error! Reference source not found-> correct the errors
Reply: It seems, that in the MS word version that I got from the submission platform, the names of table were changed in a way that table names were not
recognizable as such anymore by word and the references were broken. I
have now changed all references to text instead of using the MS word
referencing system to avoid such erros. Tgis should not have any
repercussions (at least for the course of the review process) , as we will not
add any figures or tables.
WEIGHT OF RELATION 48,75
-> use decimal points instead of commas
WEIGHT OF RELATION
RELATION P1-P2
-> there is no point in repeating the RELATION word in every row, P1-P2,... would suffice
Reply: all suggestions above are implemented
Kind Regards,
Thomas Spielhofer
