Author(s) :

Cogburn, D. L., Zhang, L., & Khothule, M.

Date of Publication :

2002

Article Title :

Going globally, locally: The socio-technical influences on performance in distributed collaborative learning teams

Editor(s) :

Editor Role :

Title of the Conference :

Proceedings of the 2002 annual research conference of the South African institute of computer scientists and information technologists on Enablement through technology

Page(s) :

52-64

Place of Publication :

Publisher Name :

South African Institute for Computer Scientists and Information Technologists

Abstract :

With the increasing use of distributed knowledge work in a range of industrial, scientific, and organizational environments, understanding how to support such work has become increasingly important. From previous field and laboratory studies, we know that a range of socio-technical factors influence performance and satisfaction in distributed teams. Among the most important of these factors are trust, leadership and the level of media richness in the computer-mediated communications environment. We also know that specific socio-technical interventions can help to build trust in CMC environments. However, many of these studies have not taken into consideration sufficiently the impact of cross-national cultural factors on distributed teams. This paper reports the preliminary analysis of a thirteen week qualitative and quantitative quasi-experimental field study of distributed collaborative learning teams, consisting of 35 post-graduate students from four research universities, two in the United States and two in South Africa. These teams completed a series of unstructured strategy and decision-making tasks, using a suite of rich-media CMC tools. Data are reported from participant surveys, narrative evaluation essays, and observations.

Related Collaboratories :

University of Michigan

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. IIS 0085951. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

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