Cross-Cultural Virtual Team Projects

2021 ◽  
pp. 86-107
Author(s):  
Anuli Ndubuisi ◽  
Elham Marzi ◽  
James Slotta
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Teams ◽  
Intercultural Competence ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Virtual Team ◽  
Project Based Learning ◽  
Virtual Collaboration ◽  
Team Projects ◽  
Intercultural Competencies ◽  
Before And After

Future engineers require global and intercultural competencies to prepare them to work in an increasingly multicultural, digitized, and interdependent global economy. To enhance engineering students' international exposure, awareness, and cultural experiences, the authors developed a unique international virtual team program that engaged students in collaborative project-based learning with peers around the world. Each virtual team consisted of multidisciplinary students from various countries and institutions. The students' knowledge and understanding of intercultural competence were evaluated before and after the program to ascertain its impact on their understanding of intercultural sensitivities and collaboration in virtual teams. Recommendations for learning enhancements were proposed. The authors found the integration of intercultural content with the global virtual team projects to be a successful strategy for helping engineering students build intercultural competencies and virtual collaboration skills, in addition to technical engineering knowledge and experience.

scholarly journals USING GLOBAL VIRTUAL TEAMS TO SUPPORT A SUSTAINABILITY MINDSET IN ENGINEERING EDUCATION

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anuli Ndubuisi ◽  
James Slotta
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Teams ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Virtual Team ◽  
Global Perspective ◽  
Mixed Methods Approach ◽  
Intercultural Competency ◽  
Team Projects ◽  
Intercultural Competencies ◽  
Successful Approach ◽  
Team Project

In an increasingly interconnected economy, future engineers require a sustainability mindset, which necessitates a global perspective, to enable them to work together with diverse partners to tackle the world’s problems in a sustainable manner. This study explores engineering students’ development of intercultural competencies within the context of culturally diverse global virtual team projects. We report on two consecutive iterations of an Intercultural Competency Module (ICM) delivered within a global virtual team project setting, in which engineering students are engaged in collaborative technical projects. Each study iteration comprised of a presurveyto gain insights into student’s prior knowledge and cultural background and a post-survey to determine students’ perceptions of their intercultural learning and experiences. Employing a mixed-methods approach, we found that blending ICM with global virtual team projects was a successful approach for helping engineering students acquire international experience and develop intercultural competencies in addition to technical engineering knowledge.

scholarly journals USING GLOBAL VIRTUAL TEAMS TO SUPPORT A SUSTAINABILITY MINDSET IN ENGINEERING EDUCATION

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anuli Ndubuisi ◽  
James Slotta
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Teams ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Virtual Team ◽  
Global Perspective ◽  
Mixed Methods Approach ◽  
Intercultural Competency ◽  
Team Projects ◽  
Intercultural Competencies ◽  
Successful Approach ◽  
Team Project

In an increasingly interconnected economy, future engineers require a sustainability mindset, whichnecessitates a global perspective, to enable them to work together with diverse partners to tackle the world’s problems in a sustainable manner. This study explores engineering students’ development of intercultural competencies within the context of culturally diverse global virtual team projects. We report on two consecutive iterations of an Intercultural Competency Module (ICM) delivered within a global virtual team project setting, in which engineering students are engaged in collaborative technical projects. Each study iteration comprised of a presurvey to gain insights into student’s prior knowledge and cultural background and a post-survey to determinestudents’ perceptions of their intercultural learning and experiences. Employing a mixed-methods approach, we found that blending ICM with global virtual team projects was a successful approach for helping engineering students acquire international experience and developintercultural competencies in addition to technical engineering knowledge.

Mobile Collaboration Support for Virtual Teams

2017 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 48-69 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keng Siau ◽  
Min Ling
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Teams ◽  
Virtual Team ◽  
Virtual Collaboration ◽  
Conceptual Foundation ◽  
Work Systems ◽  
Team Members ◽  
Development Teams ◽  
Geographically Distributed ◽  
Qualitative Technique ◽  
Sophisticated Technology

Organizations increasingly depend on virtual teams in which geographically distributed individuals use sophisticated technology to interact and collaborate. With the advancement of mobile and wireless technology, mobile support for collaboration among virtual team members is becoming increasingly important and popular. In this research, we study the values of mobile support for virtual team members. Using the qualitative technique, Value-Focused Thinking approach, proposed by Keeney, we interviewed 30 subjects who were involved in information systems development teams and asked them the values of mobile support for virtual collaboration. This study uses Alter's Work Systems Theory as the conceptual foundation.

scholarly journals Building Intercultural Competence Through Virtual Team Collaboration Across Global Classrooms

2019 ◽  
Vol 83 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-79
Author(s):  
Stephanie Swartz ◽  
Belem Barbosa ◽  
Izzy Crawford
Keyword(s):  
Intercultural Communication ◽  
Virtual Teams ◽  
Intercultural Competence ◽  
Intercultural Sensitivity ◽  
Team Collaboration ◽  
Intercultural Interaction ◽  
Communication Competency ◽  
Negative Results ◽  
Intercultural Competency ◽  
Before And After

By means of a cross-cultural virtual teams project involving classrooms in Scotland, Germany, and Portugal, students were exposed to the challenges of collaborating internationally with the intention of increasing their intercultural competency. Intercultural sensitivity and intercultural communication competency were measured using responses to surveys before and after the 6-week project. Students reported, among other aspects, a heightened awareness of the difficulties of intercultural communication. Despite a general appreciation of the project and its outcomes, negative results, such as an increased dislike of intercultural interaction, emerged. Contradictory results warrant further investigation with data from future collaborations.

Tools for Teaching Virtual Teams: A Comparative Resource Review

2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 333-347 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara Larson ◽  
Opal Leung ◽  
Kenneth Mullane
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Teams ◽  
Virtual Work ◽  
Virtual Team ◽  
Synchronous Communication ◽  
Work Skills ◽  
Professional Programs ◽  
Team Projects ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Comparative Review ◽  
Team Project

As the ubiquity of virtual work—and particularly virtual project teams—increases in the professional environment, management and other professional programs are increasingly teaching students skills related to virtual work. One of the most common forms of teaching virtual work skills is a virtual team project, in which students collaborate with each other at a distance (and sometimes between multiple institutions) to accomplish a shared task. These projects differ from most management topics in their technology requirements. In this comparative review, we describe the features and trade-offs inherent in some of the asynchronous and synchronous communication technology tools commonly used to run virtual team projects.

scholarly journals Motivation of Engineering Students Participating in Multinational Design Projects – Comparison Based on Gender and Class Status

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 78
Author(s):  
Jorge Rodriguez ◽  
Ivan E. Esparragoza
Keyword(s):  
Collaborative Design ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Learning Experience ◽  
Global Market ◽  
Project Based Learning ◽  
Educational Activity ◽  
Time Zone ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Design Projects ◽  
Global Skills

There have been different active-learning initiatives introduced in academia to provide engineering students with the necessary knowledge, skills and attitude to be competitive in the global market. These initiatives have been in response to the need in the corporate world for engineers with exposure to global collaborative environments. Consequently, multinational collaborative design projects have been used by the authors as means of introducing professional global skills to engineering students while exposing them to a project-based learning experience. This educational activity is expected to motivate students so that they can start developing the professional skills that will help them to overcome difficulties and to carry out the project successfully. However, this activity faces many challenges including, among others, cultural and academic background differences, language and time zone barriers, and issues with communication tools. Therefore, this work compares the motivation of students before and after their participation in a multinational design project, using gender and class standing as differentiating parameters. To accomplish this objective, the Intrinsic Motivation Inventory (IMI) was adapted to the implemented multinational collaborative experience and administered to the participating students. For this study, three motivation constructs are taken into consideration: (a) interest/enjoyment, (b) perception of choice, and (c) perceived competence. Results are discussed based on the research questions posed for this comparative work, and result reflections are presented.

scholarly journals Building a Global Education Collaboration Model Using Experiential Learning: A Fresh Look at Developing Intercultural Competence

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-12
Author(s):  
Bernadette Höß ◽  
Michael Wasserman ◽  
Sandra Fisher
Keyword(s):  
International Education ◽  
Intercultural Competence ◽  
Global Education ◽  
Process Model ◽  
Virtual Team ◽  
Project Based Learning ◽  
Global Business ◽  
Joint Project ◽  
Time Zones ◽  
Virtual Projects

Adapting to global business and interpersonal differences is a challenge in both higher education and industry. International education generally seeks to improve student intercultural competence; that is, improving an individual’s ability to work with an international mix of colleagues, customers, and suppliers. Nevertheless, there are many examples where these educational efforts fail. This paper explores virtual team projects, where team members at partner schools in Germany and the U.S. worked together on a joint project, as a mechanism to enhance international education and development of intercultural competence. Using interview and qualitative survey data, we find that these virtual projects offer the opportunity to access different perceptions of problem statements, products and procedures, and apply unique resources and knowledge. We add to the literature by exploring both tools and processes to address improved virtual team collaboration through the lens of intercultural competence. Currently, there are many tools which allow cost-effective communication and document exchange (e.g. Slack, Google Drive, Skype) and facilitate virtual projects. We explore several challenges: the geographical distance (e.g. time zones) combined with cultural distance (e.g. different norms, values, and language) make it hard to establish an intensive, trusting work environment. As global networking increases, universities can better prepare students using cross-cultural project-based learning – a process – that involve university partnerships beyond reciprocal on-campus residencies. We offer a process model and four experiential project-based learning ideas designed to develop cultural competence and virtual team skills, and that address challenges such as differences in academic calendars, student work styles, time zones, and educational norms.

Trust, Rationality and the Virtual Team

Virtual Teams ◽  
2011 ◽  
pp. 316-342 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Murphy
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Environment ◽  
Virtual Teams ◽  
Virtual Team ◽  
High Quality ◽  
Virtual Collaboration ◽  
Team Members ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Collaborative Environment ◽  
Group Cooperation ◽  
National Organizations

Virtual teams need trust in order to function. Trust is an efficient way of gaining group cooperation. Online, trust is more effective than instruction or authority or status in getting people who are largely strangers to one another to work together. But trust is not a simple quality. The kind of trust that is the cement of distance relations of a global or virtual kind is different from the type of trust that binds face-to-face interactions and from the procedural kind of trust that operates in regional or national organizations of a traditional managerial kind. This study looks at the ways in which trust between virtual team members is generated. “Trust between strangers” is optimally generated when persons are allowed to self-organize complex orders and create objects and processes of high quality. Also looked at are the kinds of personalities best suited to working in a virtual collaborative environment. The study concludes that persons who prefer strong social or procedural environments will be less effective in a virtual environment. In contrast, self-steering (“stoic”) personality types have characteristics that are optimally suited to virtual collaboration.

The World is your Office

2016 ◽  
pp. 87-108
Author(s):  
Petros Chamakiotis ◽  
Niki Panteli
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Teams ◽  
Management Practices ◽  
Virtual Organization ◽  
Virtual Team ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Study Approach ◽  
Team Projects ◽  
Educational Environments ◽  
The World

Despite the increasing adoption of global virtual teams in industry, and their implications for traditional management practices, creativity within this context has been under-researched, with most studies focusing on students partaking in contrived virtual team projects in educational environments. This chapter focuses on a global virtual organization, Omega (a pseudonym), with the aim of exploring creativity in an organizational virtual team context. Using a qualitative case study approach in a single organization, the study makes the following contributions: (a) it identifies the personal values that motivate creativity; and (b) it explains how individuals, technology, task and organization influence creativity, drawing on the participants' perceptions. Discussed also in the chapter are implications for practice and future research.

Intelligent Virtual Assistant's Impact on Technical Proficiency within Virtual Teams

2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-61
Author(s):  
Christian Graham ◽  
Nory B Jones
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Teams ◽  
Virtual Team ◽  
Database Systems ◽  
Systems Development ◽  
Research Literature ◽  
Success Rates ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Team Projects ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Technical Proficiency

Information-systems development continues to be a difficult process, particularly for virtual teams that do not have the luxury of meeting face-to-face. The research literature on this topic reinforces this point: the greater part of database systems development projects ends in failure. The use of virtual teams to complete projects further compounds these failures. However, recent developments in intelligent virtual assistants (IVAs), such as Siri, Cortana, or Watson, have created opportunities to automate the systems-development process and improve success rates. Specifically, the use of a virtual assistant possessing key knowledge about database systems development can increase virtual team member technical proficiency in project-based skills. In addition, a virtual assistant can contribute to the development of higher-quality virtual team projects—in this case, database management systems. This observational study found that while the result of statistical analysis was not quite significant, teams that used the IVA did develop higher-quality team projects.

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