Stefan Nilsson, a researcher at the University of the West, has recently defended his doctoral thesis on Designing for technology-mediated collaboration. Read more below. Even earlier research has shown the same about self-knowledge. Ossiannilsson showed already in 2012 in her thesis about Benchmarking e-learning in higher education, that self-knowledge, collaboration ability, coordination, inclusion, empathy, communication, collaboration and problem-solving are developed during distance studies. Today we call such abilities 21st-century skills, which are often highly sought after in today's labor market. Why not then acknowledge the utilization of such abilities, for example in the form of learning outcomes (education and learning goals). In the follow-up of Statistics Sweden's survey of distance education for Lund University in 2014, Students attitudes to distance education Ossiannilsson also showed that self-awareness and self-discipline developed to a greater extent for distance students than the comparison that did with campus students. Even problem-solving skills, communication, and collaboration indicated the students that they learned and could deepen through distance studies.

From Stefan Nilsson's dissertation:

To be able to work well together at a distance, tools for coordination are required. But it also requires self-knowledge.
- Without "self-awareness" you do not know that it is you who is the elephant in the porcelain business, says Stefan Nilsson, a researcher at the University of the West who developed technical support to visualize back a user's own actions and its influence on the group, to the user self.
With the new digital technology, we meet more and more remotely. Also from sustainability aspects before workplaces distance meetings to avoid traveling to each other. How can we, with the help of technology, cooperate better even though we do not see each other? How it becomes easier to coordinate collaboration on a shared technical workspace? When you collaborate, participants need to be able to coordinate their work, and in order to coordinate, one needs to be aware of the other participants and their activity. In a situation involving cooperation around a table, we can do this in many different ways.