GLOBAL STUDENT COLLABORATION THROUGH INTERNATIONAL BLENDED LEARNING

In today’s business, collaboration in globally distributed teams becomes more and more common. This is particularly the case in professional services and information systems (IS) where the immaterial nature of services makes globally distributed service creation easily possible.

Consequently, companies expect that graduates have intercultural skills and that they are able to work in globally distributed teams, especially in professional services like consulting or in IS. However, management or IS curriculums often lack courses that teach those respective skills.

The suggested course attempts to fill this gap through an innovative course design and delivery. The course intends to replicate a professional project environment in which the students are supposed to deliver a project as a joint international team. In the beginning of the course, students learn key aspects of project management, intercultural management, distributed collaboration, and the professional services industry in a self-paced manner through video lectures. Then they form teams, plan their project, and subsequently execute their project plan jointly. Instructors from the participating institutions supervise and coach the students. The project execution is supposed to resemble a business project with a meeting schedule, agreed deliverables, regular steering committees in which the instructors play the role of the clients.

This paper outlines the concept of this international blended-teaching course. It suggests potential learning objectives, a course description, a teaching syllabus, and an assessment framework.