Cross-Cultural Virtual Team Projects

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.

Minding the Competency Gap From College to Career

The Fourth Industrial Revolution is proving the development of certain soft skills to be of utmost importance and yet a skills gap is present regarding human-centric competencies and critical thinking capabilities. Fundamental proficiencies such as professionalism and business acumen are even proving to be deficient according to workforce trends, and this may worsen given the new norm of remote campus communities, whereas students will still engage with course content but less so with each other. As such, organizations utilizing online platforms for e-learning and virtual teaming should be mindful of not only the performance of the group but the abilities of participants and the socialization process necessary for aiding in competency development. The stages of group development identified by Bruce Tuckman are useful for reinforcing the application of the proposed principles for successful virtual team leadership by Deloitte. Through the alignment of stages and principles, virtual teams can increase their chances for not only success but competency development.

Integration of Innovative COIL Models Into the Curriculum of B-Schools in India

Learning takes place both within humans and across globally networked technologies. Teaching paradigm and pedagogies of two specific COIL exercises are shared to showcase the ‘holistic blend' which COIL proffers and how it can promote intercultural competence across shared virtual learning environments. The purpose is to share insights from the innovative cohort-based models developed for curricular internationalization and provide recommendations for incorporating this pedagogy within any curriculum.

Bringing Excitement to Learners Working With Real-Life Clients

Getting students engaged in their education involves a wide variety of teaching strategies and techniques that offer opportunities for acquiring and applying knowledge and developing skills that will benefit them in their careers. The current chapter describes the experiences of students of the Fundamentals of Marketing course when working with real-life clients (RLC) in Southern Manitoba as they developed a marketing plan for local small and medium-sized companies. As the data collecting is still ongoing in order to obtain extensive and comprehensive results, the process of organizing and launching the “Connections Project” is related here. Also considered are the pedagogical benefits of challenging students to apply the theory into a real market situation and the challenges such an endeavor like this might face. The results seen thus far show that, despite the extra work for the faculty instructors, students, and companies involved, the experience is worthy and should be continued for years to come.

Faculty Development Through Collaborative Online International Learning

Professional development through collaborative online international learning (COIL) is not reserved for students. Instructors are also positively influenced through the exchange with colleagues from diverse institutions, backgrounds, pedagogies, and practices. Instructors gain global understanding, which they can impart on their students and use to help facilitate intercultural curricula at their institutions. Engaging their students in virtual teamwork means intense collaboration and agreement on assignments, deadlines, assessment, and learning outcomes, which in turn enables instructors to reevaluate their own values and methods of work. The chapter describes how instructors from four universities in the USA and Europe faced the challenges of creating a common team culture while engaging their students in COIL projects. During the process of overcoming technological, institutional, and cultural differences, these instructors developed both personally and professionally.

Developing a Virtual Professional Learning Community for Online Faculty

Remote, online, virtual, adjunct faculty face a number of issues in performing their duties. One of the most important is their feeling of disconnect, both from working remotely and from not having on-going interactions with their peers and with fulltime faculty. Three research projects were performed to identify the needs, values, and organization of virtual professional learning communities for remote, online faculty at one university. The research included one project of the value of having the opportunity for faculty, while two others targeted specific groups of faculty within the university to analyze the methods of organizing an online learning community for faculty. The results have informed professional development for adjunct faculty at the university. A review of the literature from previous research is included.

Imagining and Creating Timeless Virtual Synchronous and Asynchronous Courses

Imagining and creating new courses, or updating old courses, can be a fun project if the instructor possesses several crucial tools: a Franklin Planner-type calendar for time management control, a skeletal framework for the course, and a learning management system that facilitates several different modes of electronic storage. With careful planning, the course designer can create a fun and instructive course that benefits both student and instructor in a myriad of ways both during the semester and long after the term has ended.

Developing Global Mindset Through Experiential Learning in Global Virtual Teams

Global mindset is a set of competencies that improves the ability of individuals to operate and compete globally and was related to multiple positive individual and organizational outcomes. Increasingly, business education is expected to develop global mindset among business students. The chapter introduces global virtual teams of X-Culture project as a possible substitute to the development of global mindset through international travel such as study abroad and reciprocal exchange programs. The experiences of students in global virtual teams and their impact on global mindset development are discussed. The chapter described additional assignments that can be used in conjunction with global virtual teams to emphasize skills and competencies associated with the global mindset. In conclusion, teaching strategies and tools that enhance development of global mindset in online classrooms are discussed.

Short-Term International Virtual Teams

Workplace communication is changing exponentially, and these changes have directly impacted employees. Employees, who learned more traditional face-to-face practices, have had to adapt to a global mindset. In 2014, 3,000 managers surveyed from more than 100 countries reported that 40% of their employees spent at least half of their time on virtual teams, and over 77% of the teams were multicultural. Preparing employees and students for a global workplace that uses digital tools is challenging. The authors developed resources and tools for a 3-week virtual team project with students at universities in the US and Europe. Resources include details about assigning teams, preparing students for the virtual team experience, launching the project, and providing context for the cultural and spatial differences that students may experience.

Reimagine Your Classroom

This chapter notes the lack of coursework responding to the growing need to educate future employees to work and manage teams in the modern digital workplace as part of learning processes. The chapter introduces a case study on a virtual teamwork class developed for higher education students. The class offers a learning experience that resonates with the modern digital workplace and work in geographically dispersed virtual teams. Theoretical framing and instructional designs discussed in the chapter shed light to strategies how disciplinary knowledge on virtual team research were used to develop both the class content and the learning infrastructure. The chapter depicts several connections between disciplinary frameworks in virtual team research and pedagogical concepts in learning and education literatures. These connections offer ideas for developing teaching and learning in online spaces and suggest implications for developing the curricula to better prepare students for the digital, global workplace.