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Worlds Apart But Not Alone: How Wiki Technologies Influence Productivity and Decision‐Making in Student Groups
Author(s) -
Heidrich Balázs,
Kása Richárd,
Shu Wesley,
Chandler Nick
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
decision sciences journal of innovative education
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.52
H-Index - 19
eISSN - 1540-4609
pISSN - 1540-4595
DOI - 10.1111/dsji.12062
Subject(s) - productivity , asynchronous communication , quality (philosophy) , computer science , knowledge management , collaborative writing , virtual team , world wide web , computer network , philosophy , epistemology , economics , macroeconomics
Regardless of the size of an organization, collaboration has become a fundamental element with regard to engagement between the organization and internal and external stakeholders. With the rapid advance of communication technologies and the free‐flow of information, the concept of collaboration extends beyond physical locations and time zones in the form of globally connected virtual teams. This study considers how modern Web 2.0‐based collaborative technologies (wikis) relate to higher decision quality and productivity, and identifies if these collaborative technologies are better suited to tasks requiring extensive asynchronous collaboration in an educational setting. Controlled experiments involving student teams that worked in technologically and demographically diverse groups showed that wiki technologies do not suit all kinds of tasks, and do not always increase productivity or the decision quality of team collaboration.