Low Cost Collaborative Tools to Support Student Teams

The Gartner group has predicted that by 2010 60% of an individual’s work product will depend on group input from team members, many working in different countries and time zones [1]. Working in a virtual team will become the norm for most students when they graduate. How are universities preparing students for this future? What experience do students have working with virtual teams in their classes? What technology exists to support collaborative group work that is low cost so that it can be widely used by an academic institution? This paper explores low and no cost collaborative work tools that are available for use in student team projects. They include open source products, such as Wikis, Blogs, Collaborative Virtual Workspaces, group support from course management tools such as Blackboard, and a commercial product, SharePoint, available at low cost through an academic subscription from Microsoft.