Networking and student collaboration in times of virtualized contacts: working out loud as a method to promote group cohesion

Prior to Covid-19, virtual teams and digital collaboration were not well established in higher education. The need for more methodical support to guide students through new group processes in a digital world is now rising. Although students are very familiar with the use of technologies for virtual meetings and sessions, for example from their private environment, and teamwork has also become an integral part of their studies, the past semester has shown that especially students in their first semesters need to be supported when working in virtual teams, building networks and helping each other in a digital environment. In this article, we introduce Working Out Loud (WOL) as a method to support students in their collaboration in virtual teams. We applied WOL to the cooperation of students in two different courses and examined the benefits in terms of group bonding, self-organization, reflective behaviour and goal pursuit. The results of this research are presented here.