Reeling in D.E. students: Equitable professional development for IT students through CMC

The use of the Internet and computer-mediated communication for facilitating project-based learning is one way of producing collegiality and fostering professional development in geographically separated teams. This paper investigates some of the ways in which students collaborate and hence begin to be ‘en-cultured’ within the profession of Information Technology. It focuses on a course in the software engineering stream offered by the Faculty of Informatics and Communication, Central Queensland University. It concludes that computer-mediated communication facilitates team-based learning and development of professionalism using email discussion lists.