Examining factors that affect students' knowledge sharing within virtual teams

The purpose of this study was to examine factors that might impact student knowledge sharing within virtual teams through online discussion boards. These factors include: trust, mutual influence, conflict, leadership, and cohesion. A path model was developed to determine whether relationships. exist among knowledge sharing from asynchronous group discussions and the above five factors. Participants in this study, were 149 undergraduate, students from two online courses. Online interaction occurred via online discussion boards, email, wikis, journals and online chat rooms. A correlation design was conducted to examine the nature of the relationship among knowledge sharing and the five identified factors. The findings indicate that mutual influence and cohesion have direct relationships with knowledge sharing. In addition, trust and leadership affect knowledge sharing mediated through cohesion. Implications of the findings were discussed in me paper.