Dialogue and Collaboration Online

Online collaborative work--especially collaborative writing--is challenging.

It's difficult to have a dynamic discussion, at least the kind that I'm used to, where you go back and forth. Perhaps it is because we don't yet really know each other yet, don't yet feel like a community, where we can push back/challenge each other's ideas, while maintaining basic sense of trust. Things like humor and tone can get misconstrued online, so it's difficult to joke around like you would in a f2f classroom environment.

How do you build a sense of trust in the group so that students can respectfully critique and challenge each other's ideas, without losing the sense of shared community?

I guess, like anything, these things develop over time.