Online Collaboration—How to Start

A defining moment in my life as a global educator happened when I was working in the Middle East in 2007. As the IT Director in a large international school in Qatar serving mainly local Arabic students, I was working with the Grade 10 technology class. To flatten the classroom walls and connect the students with those outside the country, we embarked on a three-month global collaborative project that joined my students with students in Australia, the United States, and countries in Europe and Asia. In mixed-classroom teams, they communicated online to conduct joint research and create multimedia products on a team topic related to the project's overall theme, "The World Is Flat."

Some of my students were team leaders and learned the joy and pain of monitoring and facilitating a virtual team. One of these leaders was Yara, a capable, intelligent, and forceful student who relished global collaboration and devoted hours to learning about how to get the best out of her team through effective communication.