Preparing for Global Health Care Innovation: Virtual Capstone Design Teams

The students who worked on the virtual capstone design project teams described here experienced some of the same problems encountered by members of virtual teams in industry. Some of these problems were related to the lack of faceto-face interaction and inappropriatecommunication tools, but others were related to course management, team structure, and team reporting issues. The implementation of the recommendations listed here should help our next virtual team experience run more smoothly and lead to better outcomes for the students and industry sponsors. For those of you with experience in managing virtual student teams, please let me know how you manage the issues discussed in this column and if you have additional recommendations. I can share your recommendations with readers in a future column, which will benefit other capstone design instructors trying to incorporate virtual teams into their courses.