Assessing and Promoting Groupware for Effective Team Collaboration – A comprehensive Study

Being able to work in a team is an important skill for a college student. Many courses include team projects that require students work in groups. This is especially true for upper-level undergraduate courses and graduate-level courses. Groupware is an important tool that assists team members, especially those in virtual teams, to work effectively together. However, groupware wasn’t effectively used in many student projects despite its promising benefits. In this paper, we propose a comprehensive study on using groupware to promote effective student team collaboration. The research plan includes identification of the important features of a groupware, creation of an evaluation framework, assessment of available groupware on the market and a recommendation, and finally an empirical validation of the effectiveness of the recommended groupware. The detailed research design is presented and the implication of the study is discussed.