UNT creates electronic conferencing laboratory

Large companies with several offices throughout the nation must conduct regular planning meetings to ensure that each site has the same information and that ideas are coordinated. A company may have to spend thousands of dollars on travel expenses and lose work time so managers and work teams can meet face to face. Teleconferencing is often not the answer, because a skilled facilitator with flip charts must lead the brainstorming and all participants of a teleconference cannot see the charts.

Beginning this month, however, these companies and other organizations will be able to go to the UNT System Center at Dallas and conduct meetings electronically with a mediator.

The Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service in Washington, D.C., provided UNT's alternative dispute resolution academic program with equipment and specialized electronic conferencing software. The program will set up a laboratory for handling strategic planning, problem solving and conflict resolution via the Internet.

Administered by UNT's School of Community Service, the alternative dispute resolution program offers an undergraduate minor and professional certification for students wishing to be trained mediators in alternative dispute resolution.

William McKee, professor of applied economics and director of the alternative dispute resolution academic program, says the laboratory at the UNT System Center will assist large numbers of people using Technology Assisted Group Solutions software.

"A primary strength of TAGS is that everyone who participates can remain anonymous. If you're in a strategic planning meeting and communicating face to face, you may be reluctant to say what you really think. Instead, you may say what you believe your boss wants to hear," McKee says.

In the laboratory, participants will sit at individual computers and enter their responses to questions that appear on their computer screens and on a large screen at the front of the room. The anonymous responses appear on all the screens within seconds, McKee says.

"In a traditional meeting, a facilitator would go around the room and record each person's responses with others listening, then try to write down all the answers on a flip chart," he says. "TAGS provides an almost instant tabulation of responses."

After initial responses are gathered via TAGS, participants can critique each other's responses and continue to offer new ideas. They can set categories and priorities for the ideas, use electronic "ballots" to anonymously indicate their level of support for each idea, view tabulated results on screen and discuss the results to reach a consensus.

Employees may not need to go to the laboratory to participate in an electronic meeting. They can use computers in their own offices or laptops to enter their company's pre-established TAGS conference.

McKee says a special version of TAGS helps communities address school violence issues. Through its partnership with the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, UNT plans to bring high school students and others to the laboratory to participate in surveys and electronic discussions on youth violence, he says.

The laboratory at the UNT System Center will be staffed with mediators from the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service as well as UNT employees. Groups will schedule the laboratory by appointment only, McKee says.

BY NANCY KOLSTI nkolsti@unt.edu

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