A preliminary investigation of the impact of degree of virtuality on engineering student team performance

With the growth of online degree programs, satellite campuses, and multi-university collaborations, virtual teams are quickly becoming common in engineering education settings, particularly at the graduate level. Although many characteristics of virtual teams are potentially influential, including gender and ethnic diversity, cultural differences, etc., one of the key factors identified as contributing to virtual team success is the degree of virtuality, that is, the degree to which the team is "virtual" is viewed as a continuum, ranging from purely face-to-face interactions to purely technology interactions, with most teams falling somewhere in between. An interesting situation arises in many engineering courses, as well as industry settings, where one or more subgroups within the team are co-located, and thus could meet face-to-face, while they are geographically separated from other individuals and subgroups. In this paper, we will develop a conceptual model for future investigations of the impact of degree of virtuality.