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support systems (GSS) for the same reason. The two approaches can be taken separately or together. In this study, in-depth interviews with 37 practicing facilitators provided their perspectives on critical factors that influence meeting success and potential benefits and concerns with the use of GSS. Respondents focused on a core of communication and group process skills as critical for facilitator success. Overall, the respondents observed or anticipated more efficient and effective task performance as benefits of GSS technology. Their concerns focused on technology-related issues: participant anxiety, systems inflexibility, and systems reliability. Views of facilitators with high and low levels of GSS experience are largely consistent. High-experience GSS facilitators viewed technical issues as more central to meeting success, while low-experience GSS facilitators focused more heavily on attributes of the group. The paper concludes by offering suggestions for identifying and training GSS facilitators and comments on key issues of importance to GSS designers, based on the facilitator's perspective.

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This paper presents a broad review of literature pertaining to virtual teams, groups, and meetings and summarizes prior research in this area. Additionally, it discusses the definitions used by other researchers in application to virtual teams, groups, and meetings and shows how the three dimensions of time, distance, and culture do not address the key distinguishing factors defining virtual activities. The paper proposes measuring the amount of electronically mediated communication and the amount of face-to-face communication as a means of categorizing "virtual" groups. Given higMow measures on these two dimensions, the resulting type of group is described. Finally, the paper proposes how measurement of these dimensions could lead to helpful research both enriching group theory and practitioners making decisions regarding how best to design "virtual" group, teams, and meetings for their organizations.

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This paper discusses the group support systems facilitator as a new category of IS personnel, in terms of background, skills, and training, and how facilitation might be related to existing IS personnel categories, particularly that of the systems analyst. A study is then presented which aims to increase our understanding of the role of the human facilitator, by documenting and comparing skills, experiences, and perceptions of group process facilitators who have used GSS and those who have not.

Women have been involved with IT since the 19th century, when Ada the countess of Lovelace was the first programmer for Charles Babbage’s analytical engine. Grace Murray Hopper’s contributions to COBOL and computing several decades ago are considered so significant that an annual conference is held in her honor (see http://www.grace hopper.org). In fact, the earliest computer programmers tended to be women more often than men (Panteli, Stack, & Ramsay, 2001). As the IT field progressed, however, it evolved into what many still view as a male-dominated domain, some say due to its increasing association with power and money (Tapia, Kvasny, & Trauth, 2003). Today, women make up at least half of World Wide Web users (Newburger, 2001), but this has apparently not translated into a proportionate participation in IT careers. IT managers must recruit and retain a skilled and diverse workforce in order to meet the needs of increasingly global enterprises where cross-cultural, heterogeneous work groups are the norm. However, numerous sources (Information Technology Association of America [ITAA], 2003; Zweben, 2005) agree that the proportion of females to males selecting and completing degrees in IT-related fields is declining. Not only are women missing out on career opportunities, but the IT profession is also missing potentially valuable alternative perspectives on system design (Woodfield, 2002). Worldwide, the digital divide is more extreme for women than men (Hafkin & Taggart, 2001), with the result that in many developing countries, women’s access to computers is more limited than men’s access. However, IT is an important driver for economic development and should provide women with new opportunities to better their circumstances, provided that a variety of challenges, such as technical education and social and political norms, can be addressed (Hafkin & Taggart, 2001). Even in more developed countries, females face well-documented (Margolis & Fisher, 2002; von Hellens, Nielsen, & Beekhuyzen, 2004) obstacles all along the pipeline beginning as early as middle school and continuing through college, graduate school, and the career. Developing solutions to recruit and retain women in IT may serve other underrepresented groups as well, making IT classrooms and IT workplaces more inviting and ultimately more productive environments for everyone.