ABSTRACT
Virtual teams are composed of group members who collaborate from different locations using communication technology. Virtual teams can offer flexibility, responsiveness, and diversity of perspectives in ways that differ from traditional groups (see for review Hinds & Kiesler, 2002; Walther & Bunz, 2005). By connecting people situated in different places, they can bring together a variety of diverse perspectives and experiences that traditional, face-to-face, geographically co-located groups are often unable to achieve. Virtual groups are composed to capitalize on different perspectives, abilities, and local knowledge so that a distributed virtual group should, in principle, offer immense benefits to the organizational and educational purposes to which they are put.
