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

This paper describes an ongoing study of pedagogies to help students understand the issues associated with cross-cultural communication and develop strategies for collaborating with colleagues around the globe. With the need for engineering students to work in a global marketplace established, engineering educators now face the challenge of developing teaching strategies to help students communicate and collaborate effectively across cultures. To address this challenge, this paper presents two case-studies that test pedagogies for incorporating cross-cultural communication into engineering curricula. Preliminary results suggest that classroom simulation can lead to effective meta-knowledge about cross-cultural collaboration, while students engaged in live partnerships may require more support to separate cross-cultural challenges from challenges associated with distance technology and disciplinary differences