IS Learning: The Impact of Gender and Team Emotional Intelligence

1. INTRODUCTION Just as organizations increasingly require their employees to work in teams to solve business problems, university IS programs require students to work in teams to enhance their learning (Colbeck, Campbell, & Bjorklund, 2000; Baldwin, Bedell, & Johnson, 1997). Students working in teams learn leadership, problem-solving, communication, and negotiation skills that will transfer to a work context (Hansen, 2006). In a team settings, "cognition is almost always collaborative" (Levine, Resnick, & Higgins, 1993, p. 599). In highly specialized and complex IS environments, learning teams often must exert significant effort to develop a common understanding. Emotional capability can enhance cognitive abilities and outcomes as well as academic achievement (Schunk, 1991). IS programs have determined that IS students should not only be technically competent, but also prepared to work effectively in teams and foster collaborative skills necessary in the workplace (Figl, 2010). In team-based learning, students satisfy a need to belong while negotiating and mastering course content (Sweet & Pelton-Sweet, 2008). Problem-based learning offers a teaching model fit for IS team projects where the essential component introduces the content in the context of complex real-problems. Consequently, team projects especially benefit students in IS courses that require them to apply knowledge to abstruse or unstructured tasks (e.g. Wells, 2002). However, social loafing, unbalanced workloads, team conflict, and communication breakdowns challenge team processes (Liden, Wayne, Jaworski, & Bennett, 2004; Hansen, 2006; Aggarwal & O'Brien, 2008). Conflict can particularly affect teams as they approach a critical decision, because the fear of making the wrong decision can be intense. A wrong answer may ignite frustration and confusion. Students who feel responsible for their teams' errors may be upset, and this experience can influence their future behavior and compromise learning (e.g. Sweet & Pelton-Sweet, 2008). Yet, few scholars have examined emotional awareness and management in IS learning teams. The goal of learning teams is for students to learn while working on a project, problem, collaborative assignment, or task (Fransen, Weinberger, & Kirschner, 2013). Many learning teams never function as a team, and students end up working in subgroups or individually to complete their team project work. In these cases, the team approach wastes time and frustrates, but it doesn't teach teamwork. The strength or weakness of the teams' taskwork skills impacts how their application and development skills can influence their performance (Chan, Jiang, & Klein, 2008). Consequently, interpersonal skills and a teamwork setting can impact students. Student teamwork has become an integral part of problem-based learning within the IS curriculum (Rawlings, White, & Stephens, 2005; Smith, Smarkusky, & Corrigall, 2008; Kamis & Kahn, 2009). TEI is an emergent collective human ability that enhances student team interactions. TEI is the ability to increase one's awareness and management of behavior that contributes to positive consequence (Jordan & Lawrence, 2009). TEI leverages the human ability to recognize, use, and manage emotions to enable better performance in the areas of team effectiveness, interpersonal outcomes, and even decision making (Bay & McKeage, 2006; Clark, 2010; Joseph & Newman, 2010). Remarkably, teams that "practice behavioral intelligence will notice that it affects the team's collective EI, thus enabling [them to have] greater awareness of their behaviors and to manage themselves more effectively" (Mulqueen, 2012, "Improving the Emotional Intelligence of Teams," para 4). When cognition and emotion link with the aim of improving human interaction, TEI provides substantial benefit to students (e.g. Mayer & Salovey, 1997). Many IS companies utilize the team structure for task work. …