Collaboration & Communication

Assessment

Teaching with Laptops

Building Digital Content

Virtual Teams: A Model for Communication and Collaboration in a Global Environment

As GE executives explained,"virtual collaborations" are at the heart of the way business is now being done. Sharing documents, running product tests over time zones, real-time discussions-- all are essential to participating and thriving in the global market.

Virtual Teams are groups of individuals/students who work across time, space, and boundaries with links strengthened by webs of communication technology. Team members usually have complementary skills and are committed to a common purpose, have interdependent performance goals, and share an approach to work for which they hold themselves mutually accountable. Geographically dispersed teams allow students to meet regardless of their location, achieving synchronous collaboration. Members of virtual teams communicate electronically, and can consist of members working from home or in small groups outside their immediate community.

Shared understanding in teams can lead to improved performance by helping students to better coordinate their work by improving implementation, and increase team members' motivation.

The nature of teams has changed significantly because of changes in technology and how students work. Students now have become more distributed across geographies and have the ability to share and comment on each others content. Watch the Training and Development schedule for a workshop on developing group activities and assignments utilizing a virtual team approach.

Collaborative Learning Projects at Wentworth

“There are three basic ways students can interact with each other as they learn. They can compete to see who is “best”; they can work individualistically on their own toward a goal without paying attention to other students; or they can work cooperatively with a vested interest in each other’s learning as well as their own.”
– Johnson, D. and R. Johnson,
Transforming Education: Awakening the Full Human Potential in Everyone

Cooperative (or Collaborative) Learning, is a term that refers to a spectrum of strategies in education that involve a joint effort by a group of students, or by students and teachers. In this set of approaches, they work on a common task together, rather than working in isolation or in competition. Like Patricia Boge Kendall’s or Andrew Johnson’s projects, the result is sometimes a product of their learning that lives on the web after completion, acting as a resource for other students, departments or groups. They serve the larger community in some way, often as an information resource.

Another benefit is the experience of collaboration for the student. Collaboration is a vital component of a contemporary engineering or design education. Engineers and designers must work creatively in teams and with colleagues in other disciplines. They learn to learn to interact professionally, to critique the work of others and to accept criticism and alternative viewpoints. These projects can be challenging to implement but are generally extremely successful.

Collaborative Tools

Google Docs in Plain English

Using Google Docs in the Classroom

Online Photo Sharing in Plain English

Social Media in Plain English

CONNECT Guide - Virtual Working Teams

CONNECT Guide - Collaborative Tools (PDF)

Peter Rourke – Online Class Materials

Christopher Gleason – Teaching with the Web

Cindy Stevens – Teaching with Multimedia

Andrew Johnston – The CitySection Project

Patricia Boge Kendall – Building a Student Project Website

Kate Buckman – Students Create an Online Knowledge Repository

Weldon Pries – Facilitating Study Abroad via LConnect

Michael Werner – Supporting My Teaching Using the Internet

Cynthia Fowler – Developing a Website

Fred Milder – Using New Technology