Title :
Enhancing students team work and communication skills in international settings
Author :
Escudeiro, Nuno ; Escudeiro, Paula ; Barata, A. ; Lobo, Cristina
Author_Institution :
Comput. Sci. Dept., Polytech. Inst. of Porto, Porto, Portugal
Abstract :
Our society is experiencing sudden changes in work organization in part due to the growing ease with which people can collaborate. Many successful cases of peer-to-peer models of organization arise and assume leading positions in world economy replacing, in many cases, the traditional hierarchical organization. People are evolving and interacting within heterogeneous teams composed by members from many different cultural groups and with distinct skills and backgrounds. Modern economy requires engineers to excel in collaborative and communication skills at an international setting. However, these competences are not usually addressed in most engineering curricula. We believe that in such a demanding and culturally diverse environment as the labour market is today, it is essential to promote team work and communication skills at an international and intercultural level. In the Multinational Undergraduate Team Work course, MUTW, students develop their capstone project as members of an international team while working at their home institutions. MUTW projects are to be developed by teams of final-year-undergraduate students from a multinational group of higher education institutions working to solve some engineering problem. Team members are geographically spread to assure heterogeneous teams and to promote international cooperation. This paradigm can be applied in any project/internship course unit. The results from the first edition are very encouraging supporting our initial hypothesis that MUTW significantly promotes students soft skills without requiring any change to prior degree curricula.
Keywords :
cultural aspects; educational courses; engineering education; further education; team working; cultural group; engineering curriculum; higher education institution; internship course unit; multinational undergraduate team work course; peer-to-peer organization model; project course unit; skill intercultural level; skill international level; student communication skill; student team work skill; work organization; Context; Educational institutions; Europe; Organizations; Seminars; Training; capstone project course; soft skills; students employability;
Conference_Titel :
Information Technology Based Higher Education and Training (ITHET), 2011 International Conference on
Conference_Location :
Kusadasi, Izmir
Print_ISBN :
978-1-4577-1673-7
DOI :
10.1109/ITHET.2011.6018683