Teamwork efficacy and attitude differences between online and face-to-face students

Abstract

Professional skills, such as teamwork, global awareness, creative problem solving, and ethics, are essential for the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields. The focus of this paper is teamwork. In particular, this paper discusses how efficacy and attitudes affect teamwork for the students majoring in Information Sciences and Technology programs, either virtual or face-to-face. Although online education has significantly grown, the literature discussing the incorporated online teamwork remains limited. Virtual and face-to-face teams have some similarities, but many key differences as well, such as communication, trust, and geographical boundaries. To gauge team efficacy and attitudes for virtual and face-to-face teams, we developed a survey and collected data. Our findings showed that online students had more negative attitudes toward teamwork than face-to-face students did, while both groups had a similar level of teamwork self-efficacy.