This paper reports selected results from the most recent of a series of international collaborative trials between students at Auckland University of Technology and Uppsala University. The trials require students to work together in virtual groups, comprising students from each institution, to perform a common task. The topic of this paper is how to form and sustain more effective virtual groups. In this trial a cyber-icebreaker task has been introduced and its contribution to group effectiveness is explored. Some conclusions are drawn pinpointing the strengths and weaknesses of this trial design, and some insights into effective design of electronic collaborative learning groups are gained.

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Recent calls for a new discipline of 'web science' have proposed extending computer science to incorporate the social dimensions of computing. In this paper we outline a Masters course in Collaborative Computing, which employs a combination of collaborative pedagogy, collaborative technologies, and a corpus of research data from Global Virtual Teams to blend the technology and the social dimensions within a research linked course context. We review the effectiveness of this model of learning and the conduct of the course over the five years since its inception.

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