Collaboration is especially useful in tutoring and coaching, but can also promote learning from the mere interaction of people. Because the learning sometimes results from less purposeful activities, it can be unintentional.
Online collaboration occurs in several ways.
Respondents view the messages at their convenience, and send replies to everyone on the discussion list. People collaborating online might also check a certain site on the world wide web for announcements, status reports, and other information of interest to the work team. Because these people who work together do not need to be online at the same time, the collaboration is said to be asynchronous. Because the collaboration often occurs in a conference-like situation, technologies that promote collaboration are often called conferencing technologies. Because all of the people working together need to be online at the same time, the collaboration is said to be synchronous.