Differences in student perception in heterogeneous learning teams

Two groups of engineering students of two different institutes participated in a collaborative virtual learning project. 145 students were enrolled in the 'master in engineering sciences' of the K.U.Leuven, 135 students were enrolled in the 'master in industrial sciences' at the Hogeschool voor Wetenschap en Kunst (De Nayer instituut) (Polytechnic Institute for Science and Arts). Both disciplines have a different (complementary) profile, reflected in professional activities and careers later on. Professional duties frequently require that both disciplines work together on a regular basis. However, cooperation between the two disciplines is completely absent during their formal study time. The project presented in this paper aims at filling this inconsistency. Small interdisciplinary (i.e. heterogeneous) collaborative virtual learning teams were formed by mixing students in both disciplines. The teams worked on a particular physics problem. The goal of the collaboration was for students to acknowledge and experience the complementary character of their respective study programmes. The students were asked to indicate their appraisal of the collaboration project on a questionnaire. Results show that all participants were convinced of the benefits of collaboration, and appreciated the collaboration efforts. Contrary to expectations, however, they indicated they did not learn about the unique characteristics of both study programmes. We conclude that the design of the assignments has to be improved. Indeed, the project might have hindered rather than facilitated cooperative interactions between the two disciplines later on, since the students did not experience the complementary character of both study programmes.