Developing business students’ intercultural competence through intercultural virtual collaboration: a task sequence implementation

Abstract

Purpose Allowing for interaction with foreign cultures without the need to travel, intercultural virtual collaboration represents a potential tool to develop business students’ intercultural competence. This study aims to explore students’ perceptions towards the implementation of a research-based task sequence in a project in which undergraduate Business students from Spain collaborated virtually with undergraduate business students from The Netherlands during a semester. More specifically, this paper investigates what intercultural competence indicators were mostly developed by the sequence implemented; how much each task from the sequence in question developed different intercultural competence indicators; and how much students enjoyed participating in each task. Design/methodology/approach Data was collected through after-task reflection questionnaires. A quantitative analysis of Likert-type questions was carried out and open-ended responses were used to illustrate findings. Findings Results reveal that the task sequence developed different dimensions of students’ intercultural competence and, particularly, fostered a positive attitude towards intercultural relationships, increased students’ cultural knowledge and awareness and equipped students with skills to work in diverse teams. It also showed that as complexity grew along the sequence, the average students’ perception of their intercultural competence development tended to decrease. The majority of students’ very much liked participating in the different tasks. Originality/value Designing telecollaborative projects can be very challenging and understanding the learning potential of different pedagogical strategies for virtual collaborative environments can help teachers to take better-informed decisions.