Pedagogies for Developing Cross-Cultural Communication Competencies in an Era of Virtual Collaboration

Abstract

This paper analyzes data from two different approaches to teaching cross-cultural communication skills to engineering students. U.S. students in a junior-level professional development course received classroom instruction in cross-cultural communication and enacted case study simulations; U.S. students in a senior-level capstone design course partnered with Swedish students in a digital media course to develop white papers and interactive web sites about the capstone projects. Research data includes pre- and post-course surveys, student presentations, focus groups, and transcripts of all exchanges (phone and electronic) between U.S. and Swedish students. Preliminary analysis suggests that although the capstone partnership provided direct experience of cross-cultural communication, the complexity of this real collaboration in fact limited the degree of meta-knowledge students developed in comparison to the in-class simulation.