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TopVirtual Collaboration
Virtual collaboration (VC) is defined as team members located in more than one geographic location who strive toward a common goal through the use of communication technology (e.g., Kock, 2000, 2008; Konradt & Hoch, 2007; Peters & Manz, 2007). The origins of VC trace itself to the late 1970s, beginning with early research into multiuser spaces and collaborative systems (Tate, Hansberger, Potter, & Wickler, 2014). By the late-1980s, the phrase cooperative learning was coined to describe instructional approaches that allowed students to work together online (Breen, 2013). During the late-1990s, I-Rooms became a popular way to define computer-mediated environments used for intelligent interaction, and by the mid-2000s both virtual worlds and virtual collaboration environments were created to “supplement the existing social web with virtual spaces that provide a means for the simultaneous presence of individuals” (Tate, Hansberger, Potter, & Wickler, 2014, p. 2-3; Bosch-Sijtsema & Sivunen, 2013).
Today, there are a myriad of terms and definitions used to describe VC processes: groupwares (Munkvold & Zigurs, 2005), online environments (Breen, 2013), collaborative technology (Wainfan & Davis, 2004), virtual teams (Townsend, DeMarie, & Hendrickson, 1998), virtual employees (Chen, Volk, & Lin, 2004), virtual organizations (Mowshowitz, 1997), virtual applications (Newman, 2014), digital work (Meares & Sargent, 1999), and learning networks (McKinney, McKinney, Franiuk, & Schweitzer, 2006), to name but a few. Although each of these terms shares certain characteristics, such a diverse range of terminologies has also resulted in a wide range of types, each with its own set of specific advantages and disadvantages. The present section outlines each of these realities in turn.