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"How to Create Your Own Online Course: 100 Tools, Guides, and Resources [del.icio.us] [Digg] [Facebook] [Mixx] [Reddit] [StumbleUpon] [Twitter] [Email] Perhaps you have a special skill, talent, or knowledge-base that you want to share with others, and maybe you've heard that teaching online courses can make you a little extra money. The resources below will help you discover how to combine both what you have to offer and what you wish to gain by guiding you through creating and establishing an online course. No matter what age of student, subject you want to teach, or size of the class, you will find resources and information to bring your class online. Learning Management Systems Learning Management Systems host your online class and provide a place for students to receive and turn in assignments, class communication, and more. Moodle. This free and very popular course management system allows you to design a course for thousands or only a few students and gives access to creating forums, wikis, databases, and much more. Blackboard Learn . Blackboard is used by many institutes of higher learning, as well as other organizations, as a source of online classroom management. eLearningZoom. Take advantage of the free trial to see how this application works for education, organizations, and businesses. Nicenet's Internet Classroom Assistant. Set up your course here and have access to conferencing, scheduling, document sharing, personal messaging, and link sharing. FlexTraining. This e-learning system offers a low-cost solution to providing online training and education. The home page also offers plenty of thinking-points for considering a learning management system. Backpack. While not specifically a learning management system, this app is great for organizing groups and sharing information-and is available at no charge for the basic services. OPEN Learning Management System. This open-source management system helps online teachers w

"Technology Use in the Virtual R&D Teams - Nader Ale Ebrahim ALE EBRAHIM, N., AHMED, S., ABDUL RASHID, S. H. & TAHA, Z. 2012. Technology Use in the Virtual R&D Teams. American Journal of Engineering and Applied Sciences, 5, 9-14. Keywords: Collaboration teams; questionnaires; performance; cross-functional teams; product development; structural equation modeling; measurement model; literature review Downloads: 61 [texts] UM HIR Special Feature Nader Ale Ebrahim ( 27 5 2013) Edited - Nader Ale Ebrahim Abstract:The number of citations has over 30% share in Times Higher Education (THE) world university ranking system. Therefore, most of the researchers are looking for some helpful techniques to increase their citation record. Nader is developing a module for increasing the visibility of the research which directly influences the number of citations. This article reports just some of the key points of the module for improving the citation counts.Citation:N... Keywords: Research Tools; Increase H-index; Increase citations; Maximize visibility Downloads: 12 [texts] Maryam Farhadi's Paper In JATIT - Nader Ale Ebrahim M. FARHADI, H. SALEHI, M. A. EMBI, M. FOOLADI, H. FARHADI, A. AGHAEI CHADEGANI, and N. ALE EBRAHIM, "Contribution of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in Country'S H-Index," Journal of Theoretical and Applied Information Technology, vol. 57, no. 1, 10 November, 2013. Keywords: Information and Communication Technology (ICT) development; H-index; Middle East Downloads: 14 [texts] Relationship among Economic Growth, Internet Usage and Publication Productivity: Comparison among ASEAN and World's Best Countries - Nader Ale Ebrahim Gholizadeh, H., Salehi, H., Embi, M. A., Danaee, M., Motahar, S. M., Ale Ebrahim, N., . . . Osman, N. A. A. (2014). Relationship among Economic Growth, Internet Usage and Publication Productivity: Comparison among ASEAN and World's Best Countries. Modern Applied Science, 8(2), 160-170. doi: 10.5539/mas.v8n2p160

" Creating a Company Culture with a Virtual Team July 11th, 2012 by Caroline McAlpine Posted in company culture, Management, teams, Virtual Worker Beehive Media +1 0 1 inShare When I arrived at Beehive Media last fall to take on my new role as the Client Services Director, one corporate behavior I had to quickly shed and transform was having historically only managed a core team face-to-face. Beehive Media's team is a virtual one - geographically dispersed in the greater Boston and New York areas, as well as Ukraine. Experts have studied virtual teams for the last three decades and from everything I've seen and read in the last six months, managing one is both an art and a science (sometimes a hair raising science - our CEO has no hair…coincidence?) A lot goes into managing a team across great distances, but with practice, a virtual team can be a great thing. When considering your virtual team, key questions arise such as when should we meet face-to-face? How will we communicate? What software solutions will help us manage and complete our work? How do you manage a virtual team's workload? When should we meet face-to-face? Convening a virtual team face-to-face makes complete sense; the real question to immediately ask is when and why. When you consider the stages of team development (organizational development) -forming, storming, norming, performing and adjourning (based on Bruce Tuckman's model)-it's most critical to meet as a team in the beginning when it's newly formed. It's important to meet early since people don't know each other. It's also an opportunity to create a team culture with norms, establish ground rules and expectations. Finally it's key to start to develop integral relationships among team members. Of course it's also key to meet face to face at critical points in a project - some things are better solved in person. Identifying these times is key and better to err on the side of meeting too often at the begi

" A Conceptual Model of Virtual Product Development Process Mendeley A Conceptual Model of Virtual Product Development Process Mendeley A Conceptual Model of Virtual Product Development Process Nader Ale Ebrahim1, Shamsuddin Ahmed2 and Zahari Taha3 Department of Engineering Design and Manufacture, http://www.mendeley.com/research/conceptual-model-virtual-product-development-process/ Modified StageGate A Conceptual Model of Virtual Product Modified StageGate A Conceptual Model of Virtual Product Ale Ebrahim, Nader, Ahmed, Shamsuddin and Taha, Zahari, Modified Stage-Gate: A Conceptual Model of Virtual Product Development Process (November 9, 2009). http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1522848 A Conceptual Model of Virtual Product Development P rocess A Conceptual Model of Virtual Product Development P rocess A Conceptual Model of Virtual Product Development P rocess Nader Ale Ebrahim ... The proposed model architecture of virtual product development process , does http://aleebrahim.com/Conferenc%20Papers/A%20Conceptual%20Model%20of%20Virtual%20Product%20Development%20Process.pdf Modified stagegate A conceptual model of virtual product Modified stagegate A conceptual model of virtual product [Nader Ale Ebrahim] -- Virtual teams give many advantages to ... une bibliothèque! Modified Stage-Gate: A Conceptual Model of Virtual Product Development Process. http://www.scoop.it/t/virtual-r-d-teams/p/1404185570/modified-stage-gate-a-conceptual-model-of-virtual-product-development-process-www-sciencegate-ch Modified stagegate A conceptual model of virtual product Modified stagegate A conceptual model of virtual product Modified stage-gate: A conceptual model of virtual product development process. Ale Ebrahim, Nader; Ahmed, Shamsuddin and Taha, Zahari (2009): Modified stage-gate: A ... http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/27043/ Modified stagegate A conceptual model of virtual product Modified stag

" Subscribe Sign in / Register My Account Register today and save 20%* off your first order! Details HBR Blog Network How to Build Trust in a Virtual Workplace by Keith Ferrazzi | 2:00 PM October 8, 2012 Comments (11) Teams can't function well when co-workers don't trust one another. Building and maintaining trust in the traditional, physical workplace is difficult enough, but the process is even tougher in a virtual environment, where people often have to work with people they haven't met in person. Some biologists believe that we are hardwired to distrust everyone except our own family members. Studies have shown, however, that trust can indeed be actively accelerated and maintained on virtual teams even when they have to be assembled on the fly with employees scattered across the globe. According to our research, the following best practices will help: Leverage "swift trust." Recognize that when groups first form, people are usually willing to give others the benefit of the doubt. The prevailing feeling is that "we're in the same boat together": success will reflect well on everyone, whereas failure could hurt people's careers. So people initially operate in a positive atmosphere of "swift trust." (This is what colloquially we might call the "honeymoon period" of a relationship). This is particularly true if the group is under pressure to perform so that, in effect, people have little choice but to trust each other. This is easily seen on a movie set, where actors, stuntmen, the director, makeup artists, set designers, the camera crew, and others collaborate intensely from day one even though they might have been strangers before. There are two ways to assure you take best advantage of the benefits of swift trust. Managers should 1) tout the competence of the different team members and 2) ensure that the team has clear goals that everyone understands. Over ti

"Go Virtual or Lose Your Ability to Compete Posted on November 26th, 2012 by Keith Ferrazzi If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting! A couple years ago, I made a decision that went sharply against the grain. I forced office hours on my staff. My decision caught a few staffers and colleagues off-guard. After all, I'm the one who has long advocated for workplace flexibility and greater trust as the foundation of our professional relationships. But I felt the size of my firm and its fast growth required face-to-face contact to strengthen our culture. The push back I got made me start to research the larger issue of managing employee performance in the virtual workplace. But office hours remained in force. With the research now well underway, I have to confess: I was wrong. To help me make amends, I hope you can join me for a webcast on December 5 at 12 noon EST. I promise to help you make your virtual teams hold their own or even outperform co-located teams. You'll learn from the experiences of pioneers who took real arrows for their virtual efforts but now enjoy a real advantage. IBM eliminated its regional offices years ago only to learn that "tacit knowledge" was not being transferred readily among its employees. Such informal learning often makes up the lion's share of what we need to know to do our jobs. But with spontaneous conversations at the water cooler and after-work drinks with the team at the local Bennigan's no longer a frequent occurrence, IBM employees had fewer opportunities to discuss common problems and trade "war stories" of how they overcame difficult challenges. Where staff once joked that IBM stood for "I've been moved," the acronym in their jokes changed to "I'm by myself.'" In the new virtual world: "Internet's best meetings." In the current phase of our research, just completed, we investigated fundamentals of the virtual workplace. The results and insights have been based on o

"The five "super" factors virtual teams must do well-or fail! By jaclynkostner On April 25, 2012 · Add Comment · In Virtual Collaboration, Virtual Leadership, Virtual Meetings, Virtual Relationship Building, Virtual Relationships, Virtual Team Collaboration, Virtual Team Trust, Virtual Team Trust-Building, Virtual Teamwork online meetings, virtual relationships, virtual community Virtual teams need more than a technical connection to work effectively together. What are the most important factors effective virtual leaders use to engage their virtual team to high performance? If your virtual team has little to no travel, five core factors drive a virtual team to be inspired, engaged, and connected on an interpersonal level when people are remote from each other. Here are five best practices that virtual leaders must do right when people are NOT face-to-face. Align your virtual team behind the "moment of truth," not just vision, mission, and goals. Stop micromanaging tasks! Instead, raise and focus your team's energy and passion to deliver a consistent "moment of truth" that pleases your virtual team's customers, internally or externally. Future blog posts will tell you more about this proven success factor that transforms work into joy and delivers consistent, excellent results when the leader can't be there to supervise the work. Vigorously collaborate in weekly web conference meetings. Is everyone is multi-tasking on other things during your weekly conference call or web conference meeting? Multi-tasking in online meetings is out of control today. It's the #1 symptom of collaboration failure. Connecting once a week through an audio bridge or a web conference link is not collaboration. Collaboration is the magic that happens when the team uses its collective knowledge, perspectives, and insights to create something unique and better together. The surprise is that virtual collaboration can be BETTER than face-to-face colla

"Virtual Teams: Selection and Assessment of Team Members Stephen M. Urquhart Webster University Abstract This paper reviews current literature spanning theoretical and practical research of virtual teams. Ultimately, the paper will identify the most likely predictors of success to aid in the selection and assignment of employees and other members to a virtual team. Four key areas of research are covered: the virtual team environment; critical success factors in a virtual team; individual behaviors and success factors; and current practices for vetting and assigning virtual team members. Finally, a research approach is proposed to build on the currently defined success factors, measured in the context of how they would be applied in a virtual team setting. Introduction "Ever-greater virtualization is eating away at organizational structures and replacing them with networks of free agents." - Michael Malone, The Virtual Corporation (Ante, 2009) The concept of virtual teams has existed for more than two decades (Terrie, 1987; Kirkman, Rosen, Gibson, Tesluk and McPherson, 1995; Coyle and Schnaar, 1995), however, the technology to fully optimize the benefits of a team with members in different parts of the world in support of a common set of goals is relatively new and appears to be evolving. It is conceivable that the pace of technology has in some ways outstripped the capability of workers to keep up and adapt in a way where they can make a proactive and substantive contribution to organizational goals. Based on initial research into this area of concern, there appears to be insufficient guidance available to human resource (HR) practitioners and business managers in determining which employees are a good fit for a virtual team, what predictors can be used to accurately determine suitability, and how to effectively evaluate candidates for virtual assignments in advance to avoid failures and degraded productivity. This paper will evaluate the current lite

"VTMM - Virtual Team Maturity Model AUTHOR(S) Friedrich, Ralf; Bleimann, Udo; Stengel, Ingo; Walsh, Paul PUB. DATE January 2011 SOURCE Proceedings of the European Conference on Management, Leadership;2011, p159 SOURCE TYPE Conference Proceeding DOC. TYPE Article ABSTRACT As virtual teamwork becomes more and more widely used the performance of many virtual teams is still low and initiatives improving virtual team performance are often ignored (Kostner, 1998, Lipnack and Stamps, 2000, St�ger and Thomas, 2007). One of the reasons is the lack of a reference model against which virtual teams can be assessed and gaps in the performance can be identified and closed. In two rounds of control group experiments, carried-out in 2010 and 2011 and an organisational analysis of a global engineering organisation in 2011, it was identified that a gap in performance is closely related to inappropriate behaviours of team leaders and team members in a virtual environment. VTMM - Virtual Team Maturity Model addresses this gap. It is designed to assess the current maturity of a virtual team and proposes clear steps to improve the virtual team performance quickly. This is achieved through a set of pre-defined virtual team processes. Implementing these processes will lead to a new behaviours applied by all members of the virtual team and this new behaviour will lead then to increased team performance. The increased performance can be measured in maturity levels, showing evidence of the degree of implementation of the virtual team processes. In addition to the processes, VTMM offers two best practice libraries: One for virtual team tools and one for virtual team culture. ACCESSION # 69727370 Tags: VIRTUAL reality; TEAMS in the workplace; EMPLOYMENT practices; ORGANIZATIONAL structure; BEST practices"

" In honor of Cyber Monday, we're celebrating the benefits of working virtually! Increased Productivity Virtual teams aren't limited by the distractions of typical offices. There are no water cooler distractions or constant interruptions. Many studies have proven that virtual teams work longer and harder than their counterparts in office buildings. Better Tools & Systems To effectively work in cyberspace, virtual teams utilize a number of tools and systems to communicate and stay organized. This tends to lead to increased creativity and accountability. Expert Team When not limited by proximity (good parking, subway, childcare), you are free to hire the best of the best. This opens up your business to a world of opportunities, literally. Reduced Costs Most virtual teams are paid by the hour or project, meaning you only pay for what you require. You don't pay for coffee or lunch breaks, computers or any other of the many expenses required for a typical office. *And keep in mind that there are reduced costs to the virtual support team, with no parking, travel, lunch, dry cleaning, etc. Overall, win, win, win for all including the environment. Less Impact on the Environment By eliminating the need to commute, virtual workers eliminate pollution from transportation. Eliminating commuting time also ensures virtual workers start their day fresh and ready to dive in. The bottom line is that virtual teams are constantly growing and are here to stay. As technology continues to develop, more and more individuals will choose to work virtually. Corporations have already begun to follow suit and will continue to do so as they realize the potential benefits."

"Building Community in the Virtual Workplace Jennifer L. Carpenter "Work is a profoundly social activity. The design problem of cyberspace has thus become how to develop information systems that support work socially." -- Prof. David Hakken, SUNY Institute of Technology The Internet is more versatile than any other interactive medium available to us today. It enables us to communicate with friends or with total strangers, with individuals or with large groups, using our real names or remaining totally anonymous. The Internet is not simply a medium, like the telephone or mail system - it is also a place, a virtual community where people meet, engage in discourse, become friends, fall in love, and develop all of the relationships that are developed in physical communities. Yet, the very characteristics that make the Internet community unique - physical distance and the potential for anonymity - are the greatest obstacles to its success. Peter Kollock of UCLA's Center for the Study of Online Community explains, "The key challenges the Internet community will face in the near future are not simply technological, but also sociological: the challenges of social interaction and social organization. This is not to diminish the difficulties of creating new technologies, but rather to emphasize that even these tasks will pale beside the problems of facilitating and encouraging successful online interaction and online communities." 1 Nowhere are the social challenges of the Internet so pronounced as in the virtual workplace. More and more companies today rely on telecommuting to reduce overhead costs, increase productivity, and improve employee morale. 2 While technology and communications companies such as AT&T, Pacific Bell, Hewlett Packard, IBM and Cisco Systems have allowed telecommuting for years, financial services firms like Merrill Lynch and Arthur Anderson and retail companies like Levi Strauss, Pepsi Co., and Sears & Roebuck have recently instituted

"Virtual teams for new product development: an innovative experience for R&D engineers Ale Ebrahim, Nader and Ahmed, S. and Taha, Zahari (2009) Virtual teams for new product development: an innovative experience for R&D engineers. [Journal (Paginated)] Full text available as: [img] PDF - Published Version 433Kb Abstract New interaction tools such as internet allow companies to gain valuable input from research and development (R\&D) engineers via virtual teams. Consequently, engineers also get more expertise in diminutive time frames. Virtual R\&D teams present the key impetus to the technology acquisition process. The present knowledge-economy era is characterized by short product life-cycles. Virtual R&D teams may reduce time-to-market, make available a large pool of new product know-how and provide greater flexibilities, which are the key success factors in a competitive market. This comprehensive review contains almost 100 references and covers the recent literature with emphasis on the topic. The review has focused on authentic and reputed publications and extracts the results. This article presents the type of virtual teams and their main features and explains how virtual R&D team can play a prominent role in developing new products. The article is evolved future study guideline and also illustrates how to apply virtual interaction tools and integrate engineers into the innovation process. Management of virtual R&D teams in new product development (NPD) processes in an innovative, effective and efficient is of a high importance, but the issue has been poorly addressed in the previous studies. Findings show that virtual R&D team provides valuable input for new product development and R&D engineers are able to attain virtual experience. Item Type: Journal (Paginated) Keywords: Virtual R&D Teams, New Product Development, Virtual Experience, R&D Engineers Subjects: JOURNALS Computer Science > Human Computer Interaction Electronic Publishing > Peer Review ID Cod

"Virtual Teaming As a 21st century freelance editor I have extensive experience with effective virtual teaming, otherwise known as working remotely, connecting and communicating with clients through information communication technology such as email, telephone and video conferencing (Skype). While many individual clients are quite comfortable with virtual team work with their editor, many academic organisations, businesses, and institutions are now learning of the benefits of virtual teaming and are increasingly turning to virtual team work as a cost effective way to hire the best people - specialists who can get an assignment done quickly and well. In today's increasingly globalised world, with it's increasingly casualized workforce, virtual team work is an essential business practice for any organization that has, or wishes to have, a truly global vision and reach. In the past I have worked virtually as a copy-editor and transcriber with the Max Planck Institute as well as a proofreader with Napier University. And I currently work as manager of virtual teams with the Visual Anthropology Review (Book Reviews Editor) and Versita (Managing/Aquisitions Editor). As a manager of virtual teams I use Internet communication and the quick and accurate sharing of documents through email, Dropbox and other cloud-based systems, and team-collaboration tools such as Microsoft SharePoint to communicate with other team members and share work. By organising the work of various virtual teams across the globe I am able to use differences in time-zone and regional specialisation to best advantage.My experience with virtual teaming also means that I am familiar with employment laws and the organization of contracts in a variety of countries across Europe and North America. These are skills that, as your freelance editor, I will bring to every project that I complete for you. You can be assured that our communications will be clear, concise, and effective; that work w"

"Virtual R&D Teams: A New Model for Product Development Other Languages ID: 41771 Authors: Nader Ale Ebrahim Journal: International Journal of Innovation Abstract: Increased global competitions have urged small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to develop new products faster. Virtual research and development (R&D) teams in SMEs can offer a solution to speed up time-to-market of new product development (NPD). However, factors that affect the effectiveness of virtual teams for NPD are still not adequately verified. This paper presents the correlations between virtual R&D team constructs and virtual team effectiveness by developing a "Virtual Research and Development Team" (ViR&DT) model. The items, which may influence the effectiveness of virtual teams, are taken from the literature. Through an online survey and by application of structural equation modeling (SEM) technique, the proposed model (ViR&DT) has been tested. The results suggest that the process construct is strongly correlated to the effectiveness of virtual teams. Therefore, NPD managers in virtual R&D teams should concentrate on the process of new product development rather than simply equipping the teams with the latest technology or employing highly qualified experts. Further empirical research is recommended to fully explore and appreciate the breadth of application of the ViR&DT model. This paper is a part of my PhD journey. Keywords: Collaborative teams, cross-functional teams, product development, questionnaires, Team performance, Virtual R&D teams ABNT Citation: EBRAHIM, N. A.Virtual R&D Teams: A New Model for Product Development. International Journal of Innovation, v. 3, n. 2, p. 1-27, 2015. APA Citation: Ebrahim, N. A.(2015). Virtual R&D Teams: A New Model for Product Development. International Journal of Innovation, 3(2), 1-27. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5585/iji.v3i2.43 Permalink: http://spell.org.br/documentos/ver/41771/virtual-r-d-teams--a-new-model-for-product-development/i/en Document type

"Tips for virtual team leaders: Teach your employees to manage up By Jessica Stillman Mar. 16, 2012, 6:02am PT 2 Comments inShare32 Managing a virtual team is like managing a traditional team on steroids. If miscommunications and blurry understandings of responsibility will hurt you in an office-based team, they'll torpedo your work if your team is hundreds of miles away. (On the upside, research indicates that you're less likely to be irked by the human foibles and political intrigues of your co-workers when you're not forced into close daily proximity.) Which means that while tried-and-true management practices like setting measurable goals, holding people to account and praising success continue to hold in a virtual team setting, other aspects of being a boss need to be beefed up and refined for the specific case of remote teams. What are these essential tweaks for managing virtually? Blog Workshifting recently came up with a list of seven. Old standbys, like providing your team with the proper tools, are solid reminders but probably won't come as an eye-opener to most - however, one tip in particular may have never occurred to managers of remote teams in quite the way Workshifting puts it. The blog suggests: Tell them how to manage up. Telework team members aren't in the office all the time learning how you work. Instead of making your team members figure out the best time to get your attention - tell them. Let them know the best topics to cover via email and the ones they should call about. Also inform them of those things they can just handle and never tell you. Or the ones they can handle and tell you after the fact. As managers, we spend a lot of time trying to figure out the right ways to direct employees, to coach their performance and to recognize them properly. Why not also let employees know how they should deal with you as their manager? It would save a lot of time and frustration. This is in line with advice from commu

" Cross Functional (Global) Team Building Is your organization challenged with building a global team for a critical project? Are you seeking to align cross-functional teams in a time-challenged M&A or restructuring environment? If you're faced with one or both of these scenarios, you know the challenges of designing and implementing enterprise-level global initiatives in today's economic downturn. And, more recently, global events such as the unrest in the Middle East have added to the hurdles senior HR executives must overcome in managing global teams. Now more than ever, cross-functional global projects in business and technology are especially in need of a nuanced and custom-tailored approach, as managing cross-functional and multicultural teams in disparate locations presents unique business and social challenges. Cross-Functional & Multicultural Teams A cross-functional team is a group of employees from different functions within an organization-such as human resources, information technology, marketing and finance-who are all focusing on a specific objective and have the responsibility to work as a team to achieve shared goals. Multicultural teams, on the other hand, are made up of people from different social and professional cultures, who work together toward a common goal. Managing cross-functional teams is a complex endeavor by itself, but it becomes even more challenging when the multicultural component is added to the mix. In fact, in today's global and knowledge-oriented environment, the alignment of human resources is just as important as raw materials, production and marketing, as a team that cannot work together will not produce much in terms of results. What complicates the situation is that in today's dynamic and volatile business environment, senior HR executives require a keen understanding of relevant factors impacting the formation and utilization of global teams. However, with cooperative, involved management from senior HR ex

"The 8 best collaboration tools for virtual teams"

"By Dr. Al Jury · January 22, 2012 · No comments leadership, virtual teams · Tagged: collaboration tools, virtual teams success virtual teams Establishing a virtual team is a key part of a team's long term effectiveness. Setting up virtual teams can be a challenging process, especially for team members who have never participated in a virtual team before. Focusing on a number of core elements as discussed below, should help a virtual team leader to more quickly get a virtual team up and running. 1. Choose an experienced leader The leader of a virtual team has a large impact on the set up and success of a virtual team. Virtual teams tend to rely more heavily on a virtual team leader as they have less direct interaction between team members. Often communication flow in a virtual team is between members and the leader, rather than between members themselves (which is more typical of co-located teams). As such, a virtual team leader needs to be someone who is comfortable managing people remotely, who can use the technology to effectively provide task instructions and build relationships in the absence of face to face interaction. As there is much to learn for first time virtual team leaders, we suggest that a leader has at least had previous leadership experience so that they can then concentrate on the differences a virtual team has. Read more about effective virtual team leaders. 2. Select members who are suited to working in virtual teams Where virtual teams tend to fail, it is often a result of the lack of familiarity, physical distance and incompatible time zones of team members. One of the easiest ways to ensure the success of a virtual team is pick a few team members who already know each other. This way, trust (one of the more difficult aspects to develop virtually) may be established much faster. If it is not possible to find members who have worked together previously, try and arrange a face-to-face meeting at the start (as mentioned below) to devel

"This post is part of the HBR Insight Center Making Collaboration Work. Teamwork and collaboration are critical to mission achievement in any organization that has to respond quickly to changing circumstances. My research in the U.S. intelligence community has not only affirmed that idea but also surfaced a number of mistaken beliefs about teamwork that can sidetrack productive collaboration. Here are six of them. Misperception #1: Harmony helps. Smooth interaction among collaborators avoids time-wasting debates about how best to proceed. Actually: Quite the opposite, research shows. Conflict, when well managed and focused on a team's objectives, can generate more creative solutions than one sees in conflict-free groups. So long as it is about the work itself, disagreements can be good for a team. Indeed, we found in our earlier research on symphony orchestras that slightly grumpy orchestras played a little better as ensembles than those whose members worked together especially harmoniously. Misperception #2: It's good to mix it up. New members bring energy and fresh ideas to a team. Without them, members risk becoming complacent, inattentive to changes in the environment, and too forgiving of fellow members' misbehavior. Actually: The longer members stay together as an intact group, the better they do. As unreasonable as this may seem, the research evidence is unambiguous. Whether it is a basketball team or a string quartet, teams that stay together longer play together better. Misperception #3: Bigger is better. Larger groups have more resources to apply to the work. Moreover, including representatives of all relevant constituencies increases the chances that whatever is produced will be accepted and used. Actually: Excessive size is one of the most common--and also one of the worst--impediments to effective collaboration. The larger the group, the higher the likelihood of social loafing (sometimes called free riding), and the more effort it takes to keep

"Productivity, Remote Teams At Time Doctor, we work with staff members in more than nine different countries - as you can imagine, team collaboration has a range of unique challenges. There are a number of tools that we use in our company, most of them are free. ((With over 10 years of experience under our belts, we've tried the best and worst of many collaborative tools - we thought it would be valuable to share the tools we we use and what exactly we use them for; Google Docs Google docs - provides free online spreadsheets and document management with a Gmail/Google Account. The spreadsheet feature is particularly useful when you need to have multiple people working on the same spreadsheet at the same time (something you can't do with Dropbox). It doesn't have all of the features of Excel, but it's very useful for collaborative editing of documents (including text files). You can use Google Docs effectively as a company "wiki" where anyone in the company is able to add any information to the document. How we use Google Docs: Domain management, financial reports, feature suggestion lists, payroll coverage, performance appraisals, ranking reports, login information, directory lists and online resources. Jing Project Jing Project - This is a fantastic free collaboration tool (although you need to pay for some features). It allows you to take a screen or video capture of anything on your desktop. Screen captures can be easily annotated, and you can record your voice along with any video to easily explain something. You can upload the capture to Screencast.com and they'll turn it into a simple link where anyone can view the capture. This is perfect for communicating with designers for example when you wish to write comments and explain to a designer what needs to be changed. Here is an example: http://screencast.com/t/GuTz0hjDteI How we use Jing: communicating with designers and developers, creating training and instructional vide