Resumen de Collaboration task-technology fit for student distributed engineering design teams
Brett Stone, Matthew O. Wald, Steven E. Gorrell, Michael Richey
Engineers in industry are increasingly called on to work with teammates located in multiple geographic locations (virtualteams). Engineering education has an interest in helping students learn how to best collaborate in these types of situations.Four years of multi-university, multi-disciplinary engineering capstone projects are investigated and related literature isthoroughly examined to demonstrate which collaboration tools, at different stages of the product development process,meet the needs of virtual team members for communication tasks. Student engineering design teams with team memberslocated at various locations should, during the early, middle, and late stages of the product development process,emphasize the use of collaboration tools that will best meet the needs of each stage. In the early stages, teams shouldemphasize rich communication mediums, such as in-person kick-off meetings. In the middle stages, tools which allow teammembers to perform their individual work while staying in-sync with their remotely located teammates, such as webconferencing and shared data editing tools, become important. In the late stages, as the team shifts from digital work tophysical work, tools such as texting and in-person meetings become more necessary.
