Geographically Distributed Teams in Engineering Design: Best Practices and Issues in Cases of International Teams Working from Different Continents
Geographically Distributed Teams in Engineering Design: Best Practices and Issues in Cases of International Teams Working from Different Continents
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工程设计中的地理分布团队：来自不同大陆的国际团队的最佳实践和问题
DOI：
10.18260/1-2--28403
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发表时间：
2017
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
M. Forget
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Constanza Miranda Mendoza;David Leal Martinez;M. Forget
在公司中，来自世界不同地区的工程设计团队为一个共同的项目工作并不罕见。通信技术和知识经济的进步引发了工作环境的这种新变化。这就引出了一个问题，今天的工程专业学生准备好进入这个新的国际合作环境的劳动力市场了吗？大多数报告地理分布团队或虚拟团队的研究都是在工业环境下进行的。因此，关于教育环境中的协作或分布式团队的研究是有限的（Dym et al. 2015）。这就是我们研究的动机。本文探讨了在一个以问题为基础、创新驱动的工程设计课程中，与来自不同大陆的学生合作所面临的挑战和带来的好处。为此，我们借鉴了以往的经验，将来自智利和美国的学生以及芬兰和墨西哥的学生组队。在第二次尝试中，我们将来自芬兰和智利的七名学生分组，完成了一个学期的课程。学生们在学期的两个特定时间段见面，然后在整个项目期间远程工作。学生们遵循相同的课程和可交付成果。对半结构化访谈（在学期的不同时间点进行）、博客和其他形式的自我报告数据进行定性数据分析。结果是作为一个案例研究提出的。本文的贡献有三个方面。首先，与ABET等认证机构的利益一致，它提供了如何灌输在全球团队中工作的能力的见解，以确保毕业生拥有成功进入该行业的技能。其次，我们确定协调跨文化团队工作的策略。这些可以被任何教育工作者所接受，并可以转化为自己的工程教学实践。最后，我们考察了跨文化团队的潜在陷阱。我们认为，就像在医学领域一样，讨论问题和并发症是至关重要的，这样干预才能有助于教育经验。未来的工作可能包括在ASEE社区的参与下研究更多的病例。
It is not rare to have engineering design teams in companies, working from different parts of the world on a shared project. This new addition to the working context has been triggered by advances in communication technologies and the knowledge economy. This begs the question, are today’s engineering students prepared to enter the workforce in this new international teaming environment? Most of the research that reports on geographically distributed teams or virtual teams is performed under industrial contexts. Thus, research is limited with regards to collaborative or distributed teams in educational environments (Dym et al. 2015). This is what motivates our study. This paper investigates the challenges and benefits of partnering students located in different continents under a problem-based, innovation driven, engineering-design course. For this, we build on previous experiences of teaming up students from Chile and the United States, as well as students from Finland and Mexico. In this second endeavor, we grouped seven students from Finland and Chile to fulfill a semester long course. The students met physically during two specific periods of the semester and then worked remotely throughout the span of the project. Students followed the same curriculum and deliverables. Qualitative data analysis was performed on semi-structured interviews (taken at different points of the semester), blogs and other forms of self-reported data. The outcomes are presented as a case study. The contributions of this paper are threefold. First, and aligned with the interest of accreditation institutions such as ABET, it provides insight on how to instill the ability to work within global teams to ensure that graduates will have the skills to enter the profession successfully. Secondly, we identify strategies to orchestrate the work of cross-cultural teams. These can be taken by any educator and can be translated to its own engineering teaching practice. Finally, we examine the potential pitfalls in cross-cultural teams. We assert that, as in the field of medicine, it is critical to discuss the issues and complications so that the intervention can contribute to the educational experience. Future work may involve the study of more cases with engagement of the community at ASEE.