The Industrial Projects course at Tennessee Technological University represents the practical execution of the technological skills and knowledge the students gained from all sources throughout their college career, work experience, and life. This course is the capstone experience that requires both teamwork and individual skills in solving an industrial problem. Since the students will be working in an industrial setting, wouldn't it be better for them to learn in an industrial setting? With cooperative education agreements, and some industry/education partnerships, this can become more of a reality. The students enrolled in the class are divided to groups of 2-3 students. They are required to solve an industrial project either in a nearby industry or in a special project while they are on co-op. Since the class is not meeting in a regular classroom setting, the class is taught as distance learning class using WebCT. The students enrolled in the class have access to the course materials at any remote location. Several research questions have surfaced from this experience: How do you manage the virtual team? Which communication media are students using (i.e., online or face-to-face) when completing group projects? Which media are most likely to be associated with team member satisfaction? Which methods are more likely to be associated with positive group performance? This paper will present our experiences and findings to these questions.
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