A Case Study of Individual Trust Development in Computer Mediated Collaboration Teams

Individual trust development is vital to online collaboration in teams. A semi-virtual case study, which is composed of eight collaborative student groups using Web based computer support, is tracked by the authors over one year. Surveys, interviews and documentation are applied in the data collection. A scale balance model and trust spider diagram are used to analyze the data for all three stages of this case study. A sample group is analyzed in this paper. This research offers insight into how individual trust develops over time in computer mediated collaboration. The results of each group in this case are discussed. Some new trust factors which may be important to individual trust development are also presented in this paper.