Building intercultural competence through virtual team collaboration across global classrooms.

Swartz, Stephanie; Barbosa, Belem; Crawford, Izzy

Abstract

By means of a cross-cultural virtual teams project involving classrooms in Scotland, Germany, and Portugal, students were exposed to the challenges of collaborating internationally with the intention of increasing their intercultural competency. Intercultural sensitivity and intercultural communication competency were measured using responses to surveys before and after the 6-week project. Students reported, among other aspects, a heightened awareness of the difficulties of intercultural communication. Despite a general appreciation of the project and its outcomes, negative results such as an increased dislike of intercultural interaction emerged. Contradictory results warrant further investigation with data from future collaborations.

Citation

SWARTZ, S., BARBOSA, B. and CRAWFORD, I. 2020. Building intercultural competence through virtual team collaboration across global classrooms. Business and professional communication quarterly [online], 83(1), pages 57-79. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1177/2329490619878834

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Feb 4, 2019
• Online Publication Date: Oct 15, 2019
• Publication Date: Mar 1, 2020
• Deposit Date: Oct 21, 2019
• Publicly Available Date: Oct 21, 2019
• Journal: Business and professional communication quarterly
• Print ISSN: 2329-4906
• Electronic ISSN: 2329-4922
• Publisher: SAGE Publications
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 83
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 57-79
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/2329490619878834
• Keywords: Virtual teams; Intercultural competence; Business communication
• Public URL: https://rgu-repository.worktribe.com/output/315209