The proliferation of new technologies has fostered new opportunities in the workplace, one of the most significant of which is virtual teams. As organizations expand globally virtual teams become an important part of the 21st Century landscape. Virtual teams represent a growing response to the need for high-quality, low-cost, rapid solutions to complex organizational challenges. They offer organizations the opportunity to converge the best and the brightest to tackle complex organizational issues, develop creative solutions, or design innovative products in a highly competitive marketplace. Yet, evidence increasingly suggests that virtual teams fail more often than they succeed. Challenges such teams face include (1) logistical problems, such as communicating and coordinating work across time and space; (2) interpersonal concerns, such as establishing effective working relationships with team members in the absence of face-to-face communication; and (3) technology issues, such as learning and using the technologies most appropriate for certain tasks. These are challenges similar to those faced by online students working in virtual teams. In examining the content of the virtual teams asynchronous communication I discovered, anecdotally, a social component evident in high performing teams. The social dimension is one of the least explored dimensions with perhaps the most profound implications for course design. This paper evaluates the characteristics of high-performing virtual teams in a graduate business program and proposes an instructional design which will enhance the virtual team experience.