Global Distributed Engineering Student Design Teams: Effectiveness and Lessons Learned

Twenty-first century engineering student professional skills ever growingly require the ability to work effectively in a multicultural, globally distributed team. Chalmers University of Technology (Sweden) and Penn State University (USA) have formed a collaboration to provide students with such an experience in this environment and to start to develop the requisite skills. The activity is anchored by a project supplied by a corporate entity with a realistic open-ended design component. The students are expected to mimic the operation of a multinational corporate engineering design team to develop a design solution. The collaboration was initiated in September 2014 and launched in January 2015 with AB Volvo as the industrial partner. In addition to expecting the traditional design experience outcomes, the learning objectives from a global perspective are to: (a) understand the impact of engineering in a global, economic, environmental, and societal context; (b) understand cultural/ethnic differences and develop the ability to work sensitively with them; (c) learn to function effectively in multinational teams; (d) communicate effectively in English, regardless of team members first language; and (e) develop the ability to organize and deliver communication around the globe. The paper discusses the integration of academic protocols from each university, the logistics and operation of the global student teams. At completion of the program a critique was performed from various perspectives to assess effectiveness and capture lessons learned. A pre and post survey was given to the students to assess effects on intercultural communication from the interaction. The Volvo Group personnel who interacted with the teams and supervising instructors were asked to critically evaluate the program. All information pointed to a successful program whereby the students delivered technically sound design solutions and gained professionally through the global experience. The paper concludes with a discussion of the keys to success for such a globally distributed university-corporate academic collaboration.

Proceedings of the 12th International CDIO Conference, Turku, Finland, June 12-16 2016