Boughzala, I., de Vreede, G., & Limayem, M. (2012, October). Team collaboration in virtual worlds: Editorial to the special issue. Journal of the Association for Information Systems, 13(10), 714-734
Summary:
According to Boughzala, de Vreede and Limayem (2012), there are five critical elements in a collaborative work practice: technology, people, information, process, and leadership. This article presents an organizational model that conceptualizes the five critical elements and provides a framework to highlight key insights and findings from past studies on virtual world collaboration. Realistic avatar versus less-realistic avatar in relation to level of user engagement is explored in the technology section. Human and social aspects of
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The article was published in issue 10. The abstract is specific and represents concisely the information conveyed in the article. The purpose for this article was to determine what is known about collaboration and to identify issues that require further investigation. The authors organized the information in numbered sections that made it easy for the reader to identify the critical element being explored. The authors identified pertinent literature from past studies throughout the article and wrote with clarity making it easy for the reader to understand their intended …show more content…
The authors emphasize the importance of considering students’ beliefs and approaches to collaboration and learning for examining online participation. Data collected and analyzed support the idea that effective web-based instruction is related to student conceptions. The authors argue that online learning should be examined as participation through students actively constructing meaning and contributing to others’ understanding in the community.
Critique:
Limitations and further research—possibility of reporting bias such as social desirability; concerns regarding relatively low reliability of some subscales of approach to learning so included info from previous studies with similar patterns; acknowledged teacher’s influence on students’ beliefs and approaches to collaboration so additional analyses were conducted. Objective of study was important to the field of study because contributions can be made in various areas such as assessing student collaboration and identifying indicators to help students work towards more sophisticated practice of