Resumo

Technological improvements in the last decades have brought new opportunities for the development of social life. Tools such as the Internet enable the integration of people around the world and have opened the door to new collaborative learning practices in the context of business. Thus, the face to face interaction is evolving to virtual contact.

This paper aims to investigate how participants make sense of a learning experience mediated by technology, specifically in the context of international business learning. We focus on individuals who interact socially in multicultural virtual teams mediated by technology. The objective is threefold: to conceptualize sensemaking of business learning experience; to describe the learning experience process through selected cases; to analyze the constructed subjectivities and how they are mediated in a learning experience.

Face-To-Face interaction in communication is increasingly being pervaded by mediated interactions (Couldry and Hepp 2016). There are new possibilities for novel teaching practices through virtual teams – individuals interacting through technological resources to achieve shared goals (Johnson et al. 2002). In this way, the technological artifact is relevant according to it permits individuals to reach things or people that could not be conceived before (Leonardi and Barley 2008). Social behaviors reflected in individual habits are part of the intersubjective process of sensemaking (Weick 1995).

The research has a qualitative character, using the case study as a research strategy. Data were gathered by semi-structured interviews with participants of a virtual multicultural team organized for a business learning project, and then we conducted a content analysis.

Results point to technological mediation as an element that modifies the meaning of business learning. The social dimension is present in the construction of the meaning of the learning experience. The figure of the leader directly guarantees the motivation of the teammates and the fulfillment of the deadlines, besides facilitating the process of consensus among the group. The cultural diversity itself also helps the good relationship and agreement among the team members, as it promotes a greater openness to the debate and the dialogue of divergent ideas and visions.

Sensemaking is drawn from each interaction and the individual's access to information from the past also affects how the meaning is assigned in that relationship. Finally, the desire for connection to a real professional exercise leads individuals to a technology-mediated experience in which learning operates by developing new skills that were not even known to these individuals.

Couldry, Nick, and Andreas Hepp. 2016. The Mediated Construction of Reality. Cambridge: Polity Press. Johnson, Scott D., Chanidprapa Suriya, Seung Won Yoon, Jared V. Berrett, and Jason La Fleur. 2002. “Team Development and Group Processes of Virtual Learning Teams.” Computers & Education 39: 379–393. Leonardi, Paul M., and Stephen R. Barley. 2008. “Materiality and Change: Challenges to Building Better Theory about Technology and Organizing.” Information and Organization 18 (3): 159–176. Weick, Karl E. 1995. Sensemaking in Organizations. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.