Communication in virtual teams: Ten years of experience in education

    Authors

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

    Comments

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    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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