The Modality Challenge: Demonstrating Communication Media Fit for Equivocal Tasks Across Work Modalities

This article introduces a fun, team design activity, tailored to an undergraduate or graduate Organizational Behavior course, that allows students to experience the trade-offs of different media for work on equivocal tasks by creating physical location conditions that mimic in-person and remote work modalities. For the first challenge, team members sit near each other in the “in-person” condition allowing them to brainstorm and sketch ideas face-to-face. In the second challenge, the “remote” condition, team members are physically separated across the four corners of the room and must communicate via tools available to remote workers (e.g., Zoom). Each team then presents their best design and reflects on and evaluates the effectiveness of communication media of different richness for high and low equivocal tasks. Our students noted their enjoyment of the challenges and the benefits and drawbacks they experienced collaborating with their teammates via the media available across the two modality conditions.