Supporting Inclusive Engineering Education using Global Virtual Teams

Abstract

Future engineers require global competencies to help them transition to the labor market in an increasingly complex, digitized, and evolving world economy. In response, an International Virtual Engineering Student Teams’ (InVEST) program was developed, in which multidisciplinary students were engaged in collaborative technical projects within a global virtual team learning environment. This study examines engineering students’ intercultural competencies and supports their development of those competencies within the context of a global engineering project where they work in culturally diverse teams. We report on two successive iterations of the engineering global virtual team (GVT) learning program. Each included a pre-survey to understand student’s initial knowledge and cultural orientation and a post-survey to assess students’ perceptions of their intercultural learning and experiences. We found that blending global virtual team learning with collaborative international projects was an effective strategy for helping engineering students gain international exposure in an inclusive manner while developing intercultural competencies, virtual team collaboration skills, and technical engineering knowledge.