Collaboration in a Distributed World: Technological Support for Partially Distributed Teams

Virtual teams are increasingly common in information technology (IT)-related fields. Many of these teams are partially distributed, with sub-teams of co-located members working from different geographic locations; thus collaboration in partially distributed teams (PDTs) is an increasingly important skill in IT fields. Though educators are aware of this, innovative teaching strategies and tools to fulfill this essential educational component are hard to find. This paper reports initial experiences with student PDT projects that were supported by a collaborative system created from open-source tools. Several iterations of the online system were tested using globally distributed teams of undergraduate and graduate students from a number of cooperating universities. We discuss the elements of collaboration support that were needed, and consider how others might implement similar PDT activities for educational purposes.