Evaluating the impact of computer-supported international collaborative teamwork in business education

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Communication of research to practice in library and information science: Closing the gap

A widely held concern in library and information science (LIS) is that the relationship between research and practice, and particularly the communication of research to practice, is flawed. Through critical analysis of the literature, the authors examine the nature of the gap between research and practice, strategies to reduce the gap, and research on the effectiveness of the strategies. Eleven types of gap are identified: knowledge, culture, motivation, relevance, immediacy, publication, reading, terminology, activity, education, and temporal. Strategies proposed in the literature emphasize ways to increase practitioner research activity and to close the publications gap. Only one of the proposed strategies, inclusion of research reports in practitioner publications, is supported by research. The authors propose further research to evaluate this and other strategies based on recognition of a wider range of channels for communication of research to practice and the role of intermediaries between researchers and practitioners

Evaluating the impact of computer-supported international collaborative teamwork in business education

This article describes how a computer-supported collaborative learning project, conducted across several business schools in different countries, was evaluated by the instructors at one of the participating schools. The students worked in virtual teams to produce a common project outcome, a business plan. The evaluation was based on: learning outcomes as measured by team project scores, individual scores on learning about the topics the collaboration was designed to illustrate, and student reports of the relationship between participation and learning; student satisfaction with experience as team members and with the process of learning through participation in the exercise; and statistical analyses of the relationship between learning and participation. The goals for the project were met: most students explicitly related their learning about working in virtual teams to participation in the collaboration rather than to other course activities, and most students were satisfied with this approach to learning. The authors attribute the success of the project to the way it was integrated into course design. They suggest that learning about virtual teamwork could be attained to the satisfaction of more students if more project time were spent on team building and less on tasks associated with a complex project