This paper explores the challenges of creating and maintaining trust in a global virtual team whose members transcend time, space, and culture. The challenges are highlighted by integrating recent literature on work teams, computer-mediated communication groups, cross-cultural communication, and interpersonal and organizational trust. To explore these challenges empirically, we report on a seri...

This paper attempts to study the relationship of argumentation and knowledge building at a discourse level. Its basic research question is whether discourse more indicative of argumentation also indicates characteristics of knowledge building. A total of two databases of online discourse generated by sixth-grade and tenth-grade students were analyzed to see whether the findings can be generaliz...

This research invokes two theoretical perspectives — the equalization hypothesis and the SIDE model — to examine the impact of individuals’ sex on group members’ use of anonymous, computer-mediated collaborative technologies. Data from 127 individuals in 22 enduring task groups indicate that the strategies employed differentially by men and women correspond with inferred motivations: men are mo...

There has been an increasing interest in the use of computer-mediated communication (CMC) in problem-based learning. One line of research has been to introduce synchronous, or simultaneous, communication attempting to create text-based digital real-time interaction. Compared with face-to-face (F2F) communication, CMC may be a poorer medium regarding coordination of the activity. Still, we are i...

Experimental research on Group Decision Support Systems (GDSS) has generally focused on democratic groups whose members typically share the same objectives. In organizations, however, there are many situations where groups have a leader who has the power to override the group’s recommendation, the objective of the leader may not be the same as the objective of each member, and not everyone may ...

Recent studies demonstrated the benefit of integrating speaker prediction features into the design of group-communication services supporting multiparty online discourse. This paper aims at delivering a more elaborate analysis of speaker prediction by analyzing a larger volume of data. Moreover, it tests the existence of speakers dominating speaking time. Towards this end, we analyze tens of ho...

This paper examines whether conversational norms that have been observed for face-to-face communication also hold in the context of a specific type of computer-mediated communication: collaboration (such as in Wikipedia). Specifically, we tested adherence to Grice’s (1975) maxim of relation—the implicit demand to contribute information that is relevant (only) for the purpose of the communicatio...

We present in this paper, the application of a novel approach to computational modeling, understanding and detection of social phenomena in online multi-party discourse. A two-tiered approach was developed to detect a collection of social phenomena deployed by participants, such as topic control, task control, disagreement and involvement. We discuss how the mid-level social phenomena can be re...

As writing instruction moves from the defined spatial and temporal parameters of the traditional classroom to various degrees of online interaction—from explanatory e-mails to courseware mediated distance education—instructors have had to reconceptualize how they identify themselves to their student audience. While many instructors have tried to translate their face-to-face strategies to the di...

The paper specifies modular software for synchronous and asynchronous computer-mediated communication and visualization in network-distributed environments. It is new because the distribution of the visualization pipeline is not prescribed, compared to other systems, and supports time-deferred collaboration and presentation by means of recordable sessions of use. Data source is a remote program...