This assignment is worth 25% of your final grade. It gives you an opportunity to investigate trends in a topic related to virtual and global teams. You must complete this assignment individually, without contacting other students, and you may not use a paper or any part of a paper from a previous class or from another person or an online source. If you have any questions about this assignment, please post them in the Ask the Professor discussion forum so that everyone can benefit from the answers. This assignment addresses Course Objectives 3, 4, and 5.
Pick a topic related to virtual and global teams that interests you and explore it further in 6-10 pages. Sample topics: use of technology among virtual teams; team-based rewards and recognition programs; characteristics of effective leaders of virtual teams; use of virtual teams in global corporations; theories of virtual team development. Identify and discuss the trends in your chosen topic area.
Support your opinions and statements with a minimum of seven references from sources published within the last ten years and integrate appropriate concepts and theories from our work over the semester. You can cite scholarly and practitioner-oriented journals, newspaper articles, and YouTube videos about the topic, but not Wikipedia, consulting company websites, or other non-academic sources. Please use the UMUC library to conduct a search for appropriate sources of information. You can access the library through the Resources section of our classroom (on the ribbon above the course title banner) or directly at https://sites.umuc.edu/library/index.cfm. Librarians are available by phone, email, and chat; they can help you narrow your topic, create a search strategy, and identify appropriate sources. You can also consult a graduate writing tutor for help with organizing your ideas, presenting them clearly, and complying with APA style requirements. You can access tutors through the Writing Tutoring module in our classroom.
Use APA format for all citations, references, and quotations. This means your list of references should start on a separate page, and should be double spaced, with a hanging indent and no spaces between entries. Your paper should be 6-10 pages (not counting the cover or reference pages), double spaced with one inch margins and a font size of at least 11 points. Writing should be in third person. For help with writing in the third person, see https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/first-second-and-third-person?page=2.
Please include the following statement on your cover page:
This paper is my own work that I created specifically for this course and this section. All research or material that I used in preparing this paper has been properly acknowledged within the assignment in accordance with academic standards for complete and accurate citation of sources.
Submit your assignment electronically via the Assignment folder.
Name your file this way: YourLastNameFirstInitial_IndividualResearch
(Example: StudentJ_IndividualResearch)
Due date: Sunday, [insert date], 11:59 p.m. Eastern time
Please see the next page for the grading criteria for this assignment.
Criteria for Grading Individual Research Paper
Note: The research paper should be 6-10 pages long, excluding the reference and cover pages.