Title

Communication in virtual teams: Ten years of experience in education

Authors

Authors

A. F. Rutkowski; D. Vogel; M. van Genuchten;C. Saunders

Comments

Authors: contact us about adding a copy of your work at STARS@ucf.edu

Abbreviated Journal Title

IEEE Trans. Prof. Commun.

Keywords

communication; curricula; engineering education; experience; learning; planning; virtual teams; Communication; Engineering, Multidisciplinary

Abstract

Engineering teams are often globally distributed and comprise participants from multiple disciplines and cultures who rely on professional communication support. Companies, organizations, and institutions increasingly embrace these virtual teams and use a variety of information and communication technologies to support synchronous and asynchronous team interaction (e.g., chat, videoconferencing, email, group support systems, instant messaging, and forums). More and more, communication takes place without being face-to-face. Students should be prepared for such a workplace. However, it is difficult to emulate the specifics of real-world projects in a 100-hour university course. One way to bring the real world into the classroom is by combining the efforts of 100 Students into a 10,000-hour project. This paper describes the Hong Kong-Netherlands project (HKNet) as an example of an integrated learning activity among multiple international institutions that brings the reality of engineering management with professional communication into educational contexts. Virtual teams comprising students from different parts of the world build websites on specific software topics that are then integrated into a single product. HKNet has entered its tenth year, and over 1000 students have participated.

Journal Title

Ieee Transactions on Professional Communication

Volume

51

Issue/Number

3

Publication Date

1-1-2008

Document Type

Article

Language

English

First Page

302

Last Page

312

WOS Identifier

WOS:000258916100005

ISSN

0361-1434

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