Analysis and Modeling of Academia's Collaborative Decision Support System Based on Key Performance Indicators and Degree of Certainty

Abstract

Increasingly, academia is relying on a novel concept of virtual teams for Collaborative Decision Making (CDM) processes amongst the students across the globe (different cultures). To facilitate collaboration in international virtual teams there is a need to support cross-cultural decision making through a series of steps required to improve problem solving and decision making. In this paper we analyze the CDM processes in international virtual environment and discuss the opportunity to support CDM through the use of a Computer-Aided Collaborative Decision Making (CA-CDM). In CA-CDM students declare their knowledge in terms of the Degree of Certainty (DC) during the collaboration process. In this research, a process model based on various Key Performance Indicators (KPI) designed to figure out the key challenges, performance and differences in CDM. Based on these KPI variables and their scores, two different models are suggested to calculate the difference and similarity in CDM. The designed computer-supported environment supports CDM processes to address critical thinking, deep learning and knowledge transformation. In this computer program model, based on Degree of Certainty of each peer student, each student declares their communication certainty before starting a virtual interaction to support a CDM process. Incorporation of the suggested KPIs modeling; this learning environment will optimize the output of virtual team decision support collaboration.