•This paper reviews the online learning literature to address the attrition issue and increase the learning outcomes.•The review is classified into three categories, technology adoption, continuation ...of technology use, and learning outcomes.•Antecedents of adoption, continuance, and learning outcome are classified according to social cognitive theory framework.•Integration of virtual communities to online learning platforms is proposed for better outcome and engagement.•Future directions are discussed to enrich the online learning experience.
The use of Technology to facilitate better learning and training is gaining momentum worldwide, reducing the temporal and spatial problems associated with traditional learning. Despite its several benefits, retaining students in online platforms is challenging. Through a literature review of the factors affecting adoption, the continuation of technology use, and learning outcomes, this paper discusses an integration of online learning with virtual communities to foster student engagement for obtaining better learning outcomes. Future directions have been discussed, the feedback mechanism which is an antecedent of students’ continuation intention has a lot of scopes to be studied in the virtual community context. The use of Apps in m-learning and the use of cloud services can boost the ease and access of online learning to users and organizations.
This study investigates the mechanism by which trust is formed and affects collaboration in virtual teams. In so doing, we identify the judgement dimensions involved in determining interpersonal ...trustworthiness (i.e., ability, benevolence, integrity and goal congruence) and systems through which virtual interactions are organized and executed (i.e., system performance, system design, and system assurance). We also examine the way in which trust influences three distinct aspects of collaboration (i.e., cooperation, coordination, and knowledge sharing). Further, we investigate whether trust and collaboration would be affected by the culture of autonomy and task complexity. The proposed hypotheses were tested with data from 483 respondents collected in South Korea. The results find that coordination and cooperation enhance knowledge sharing and that trust is critical in determining all aspects of collaboration. We find that ability, integrity, and goal congruence as well as system performance and system design are significant in forming trust. The results also indicate that virtual teams with strong autonomy have greater trust and collaboration than those with weak autonomy. Virtual teams carrying out complex tasks exhibit higher trust and collaboration than those working on simple tasks.
•Cooperation and coordination enhance knowledge sharing in virtual teams.•VTT enhances all three dimensions of collaboration.•VTT is determined by ability, integrity, and goal congruence of team members.•VTT is affected by system performance and system design.•Autonomy and task complexity affect the level of trust and collaboration.
Nowadays, virtual organizations like traditional organizations are full participants in economic processes and play an important role in the life of society, including the sphere of public ...administration. For stabilized operation and interaction of the virtual organization with various target groups it must not only ensure the coordinated working process and produce goods of high quality (or services), but it also should have appropriate reputation, guaranteeing that the organization is reliable.
The most significant challenge in facilitating a professional virtual community (PVC) is maintaining a continuous supply of knowledge from members, especially because lurkers often make up a large ...portion of an online community. However, we still do not understand how knowledge‐sharing intention (KSI) is formed across poster and lurker groups. Accordingly, this study seeks to provide a fuller understanding of the formation of behavioral intention in PVCs by decomposing the psychological formation of KSI and focusing on factors deemed likely to influence the KSI of posters and lurkers. This study's online survey of 177 posters and 246 lurkers from 3 PVCs demonstrated that enjoyment in helping others positively influenced posters' attitudes toward knowledge sharing, whereas reciprocity and technology adoption variables (perceived ease of use and compatibility) positively influenced lurkers' attitudes. Interpersonal trust and peer influence strongly affected the subjective norm of knowledge sharing in both groups, with posters emphasizing interpersonal trust and lurkers emphasizing peer influence. Furthermore, knowledge self‐efficacy and resource availability enhanced the perceived behavioral control of knowledge sharing in both groups, with knowledge self‐efficacy affecting posters the most and resource availability influencing lurkers the most. The results of this study have important implications for both research and practice.
Individuals increasingly rely on healthcare virtual support communities (HVSCs) for social support and companionship. While research provides interesting insights into the drivers of informational ...support in knowledge-sharing virtual communities, there is limited research on the antecedents of emotional support provision and companionship activities in HVSCs. The unique characteristics of HVSCs also justify the need to reexamine members' voluntary provisions of help in such communities. This paper develops a model that examines the relationships between the structural, relational, and cognitive dimensions of social capital and the provision of informational and emotional support, and engagement in companionship activities in HVSCs. The model is tested based on data generated through an automated method that classifies and analyzes user-generated text in three healthcare virtual support communities (breast, prostate, and colorectal cancer). The results show that all three dimensions of social capital impact the provision of emotional support; both structural and relational capital facilitate engagement in companionship activities; and only cognitive capital enables the provision of informational support. Research and practical implications on the need to facilitate informational and emotional support provision and companionship activities in healthcare virtual support communities are discussed.
Driven by an unexpected transition into virtual working worldwide as a result of the Coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) pandemic, in this paper, we examine the extent to which existing knowledge ...from the literature on virtual teams (VTs) spanning two decades can be used to inform how leadership can be exercised in the Covid-19 ‘new normal’, involving ‘reconfigured’ VTs which have both similarities with, and differences from, earlier VTs. Drawing on existing literature on VTs pre-Covid-19, we explore what current (and future) VTs might look like and what this means for leadership in this new context with an emphasis on how leadership, or e-leadership, can be exercised to help the leaders of traditional, physically collocated teams that had to transition into VTs. These new e-leaders need to come to grips with a variety of new challenges in order to create high-performing and sustainable VTs. Following a semi-systematic, state-of-the-art literature review, we: (a) identify key themes and explain with a theoretical model how existing knowledge can lead to new insights for newly transitioned e-leaders; (b) discuss what future information systems (IS) researchers should focus on given the reconfiguration and new characteristics of VTs in the Covid-19 context; and (c) ‘translate’ the findings of our synthesis of the existing literature into prescriptive advice that can be used to inform practitioners.
•Covid-19 has led to new, differently configured virtual teams with new characteristics.•Leaders of physically collocated teams had to transition into e-leaders.•e-Leadership should be reimagined by focusing on the themes presented in our model.•Each theme shows how existing literature can be applied to Covid-19 VTs.•New propositions and implications for research and practice emerge from our model.
GlideinWMS is a distributed workload manager that has been used in production for many years to provision resources for experiments like CERN’s CMS, many Neutrino experiments, and the OSG. Its ...security model was based mainly on GSI (Grid Security Infrastructure), using X.509 certificate proxies and VOMS (Virtual Organization Membership Service) extensions. Even when other credentials, like SSH keys, were used to authenticate with resources, proxies were also added all the time, to establish the identity of the requestor and the associated memberships or privileges. This single credential was used for everything and was, often implicitly, forwarded wherever needed. The addition of identity and access tokens and the phase-out of GSI forced us to reconsider the security model of GlideinWMS, to handle multiple credentials which can differ in type, technology, and functionality. Both identity tokens and access tokens are supported. GSI proxies even if no more mandatory, are still used, together with various JWT (JSON Web Token) based tokens and other certificates. The functionality of the credentials, defined by issuer, audience, and scope, also differ: a credential can allow access to a computing resource, or can protect the GlideinWMS framework from tampering, or can grant read or write access to storage, can provide an identity for accounting or auditing, or can provide a combination of any the formers. Furthermore, the tools in use do not include automatic forwarding and renewal of the new credentials so credential lifetime and renewal requirements became part of the discussion as well. In this paper, we will present how GlideinWMS was able to change its design and code to respond to all these changes.
Virtual teams (i.e., geographically distributed collaborations that rely on technology to communicate and cooperate) are central to maintaining our increasingly globalized social and economic ...infrastructure. “Global Virtual Teams” that include members from around the world are the most extreme example and are growing in prevalence (Scott and Wildman in Culture, communication, and conflict: a review of the global virtual team literature, Springer, New York, 2015). There has been a multitude of studies examining the difficulties faced by collaborations and use of technology in various narrow contexts. However, there has been little work in examining the challenges faced by virtual teams and their use of technology to mitigate issues. To address this issue, a literature review was performed to highlight the collaboration challenges experienced by virtual teams and existing mitigation strategies. In this review, a well-planned search strategy was utilized to identify a total of 255 relevant studies, primarily focusing on technology use. The physical factors relating to distance are tightly coupled with the cognitive, social, and emotional challenges faced by virtual teams. However, based on research topics in the selected studies, we separate challenges as belonging to five categories: geographical distance, temporal distance, perceived distance, the configuration of dispersed teams, and diversity of workers. In addition, findings from this literature review expose opportunities for research, such as resolving discrepancies regarding the effect of tightly coupled work on collaboration and the effect of temporal dispersion on coordination costs. Finally, we use these results to discuss opportunities and implications for designing groupware that better support collaborative tasks in virtual teams.
Social media has changed the way many team members “meet” for the first time. Due to the increased use of virtual environments, it is now common for team members to examine each other’s profile on a ...firm’s enterprise social networking site (ESNS) in lieu of an initial face-to-face meeting. This study examines how the information provided in an ESNS impacts impression formation at the initial formation of a virtual team, specifically perceptions of social capital (i.e., relational, structural, and cognitive). To examine social capital perceptions, the elaboration likelihood model (ELM) is utilized to understand how not only information impacts these perceptions but the way in which the user processes information to form the perceptions. Toulmin’s model of argumentation is used in conjunction with ELM to understand the strength of the argument presented. Results suggest that users evaluate ESNS information differently depending on the type of processing (heuristic or systematic) and that these social capital perceptions influence preferences for different team members.
Advances in information, communication, and computational technologies allow digital volunteer networks formed by concerned publics across the globe to contribute to an effective response to ...disasters and crises. Digital volunteer networks are event-centric and emergent networks. Currently, the literature is sharply growing in the fields of communication, computer science, emergency management, and geography. This article aims to assess the current status of the literature and suggest a comprehensive conceptual framework of digital volunteer networks in response to disasters and crises. This framework is based on a traditional input–process–output model consisting of three dimensions: the disaster and crisis context, a voluntary response process, and outputs and outcomes. We also discuss challenges of digital volunteer networks for crisis response. This article is expected to contribute to the development of related theories and hypotheses and practical strategies for managing digital volunteer networks.
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