Leaders and Followers In Student Online Project Teams

This paper reports an empirical study that explores how leadership behaviors emerge and are distributed in online student teams, and the relationship of emergent leadership patterns to various outcomes. Two patterns of emergent leadership were identified: strong and weak leadership. Results suggest that weak leadership is at least equally effective and may be more effective than strong leadership in producing positive team outcomes. Weak leadership may also produce interaction patterns more conducive to the educational objectives of a "community of inquiry" model.