Does my country's social media work for you? A virtual team project with an international twist.

Luck, Susan; Swartz, Stephanie; Barbosa, Belem; Crawford, Isabella

Abstract

The world's businesses are just that: world businesses. And to compete and be successful in these world businesses, no matter at what level of employment, employees need intercultural communication competency skills. The days of being fairly confident that employees within a division will share one's culture are over. Without employees who have the ability to understand and work within the framework of each other's cultural communication, those world businesses will falter. However, although universities are placing an increasing emphasis on providing theoretical education in intercultural competence, studies from the workplace show that this increase in emphasis has not yielded desired results. In fact, the U.S. National Association of Colleges and Employers 2018 Jobs Outlook Survey found that the percentage of graduating seniors and young employees who believed that they were proficient in global/intercultural fluency was much higher than the percentage view of employers (Bauer-Wolff, 2018). As both teachers and researchers, the authors believe that part of the disconnect lies in the difference between learning about intercultural differences and actually experiencing those differences. In an effort to promote intercultural competency in students despite the constraints that might prevent them from studying abroad, university instructors are bringing the world into the classroom through collaborative online international learning (COIL) (SUNY Center for COIL, 2010). International virtual team projects bring students into direct contact with counterparts across the globe and simulate real-life international project experiences. In globally networked learning environments (GNLEs), students are encouraged to apply theoretical knowledge to actual intercultural interactions (Starke-Meyerring, 2010). As we explored methods of experiential learning, we asked ourselves: What happens when students are assigned to interact with students in a classroom in another country? To answer that question, the authors designed an experiential intercultural collaborative project to expose students to differences in real-life situations.

Citation

LUCK, S., SWARTZ, S., BARBOSA, B. and CRAWFORD, I. 2019. Does my country's social media work for you? A virtual team project with an international twist. In Smith, J.A., Good, D., Kurthakoti, R., Swank, A. and Ichikawa, M. (eds.) Proceedings of the 46th Annual conference of the Association for Business Simulation and Experiential Learning (ABSEL 2019), 20-22 March 2019, Old Town San Diego, California, USA. Developments in business simulation and experiential learning: proceedings of the annual ABSEL conference, 46. Oklahoma: ABSEL [online], article number 3211. Available from: https://journals.tdl.org/absel/index.php/absel/article/view/3211

• Presentation Conference Type: Conference Paper (published)
• Conference Name: 46th Annual conference of the Association for Business Simulation and Experiential Learning (ABSEL 2019)
• Start Date: Mar 20, 2019
• End Date: Mar 22, 2019
• Acceptance Date: Mar 20, 2019
• Online Publication Date: Mar 24, 2019
• Publication Date: Mar 24, 2019
• Deposit Date: Jul 1, 2019
• Publicly Available Date: Jul 1, 2019
• Publisher: Association for Business Simulation and Experiential Learning
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Pages: 58-61
• Series Title: Developments in business simulation and experiential learning
• Series Number: 46
• Keywords: Experiential learning; Intercultural communication; Global business
• Public URL: https://rgu-repository.worktribe.com/output/315227
• Publisher URL: https://journals.tdl.org/absel/index.php/absel/article/view/3211
• Contract Date: Jul 1, 2019