InVEST: Integrating Virtual Collaboration and Intercultural Competencies in Engineering Education

Organizations are increasingly relying on intercultural competencies of employees and skills of virtual teams. While on-the-job training can support employees adapting and adoption of these competencies, organizations look to higher education institutions to ensure that the next generation of engineers joining the workforce are prepared in advance. Engineers like other members of the workforce face the same opportunities and challenges that result from globalization, the need for intercultural knowledge and skills [1] [2]. These skills however are not explicitly offered or honed in most post-secondary educational institutions. While many educational institutions offer traditional exchange and travel abroad opportunities to students [5] [6], these programs are limited by constraints including time, finances, and other resources [3]. In response, engineering programs are exploring how to harness various technologies to satisfy academic and labor market needs in a scalable manner. The International Virtual Engineering Student Teams (InVEST) initiative supports students in honing their intercultural, global, and virtual team skills. Students working on Research and Capstone projects can enhance their learning by taking the add-on module-based course. The InVEST course is developed using the Knowledge, Community, and Inquiry (KCI) pedagogical model [5] in which students experience the course through a blend of online, social and collaborative experiential learning and synchronous video meetings. The InVEST initiative is designed to address this gap in engineering education, by facilitating development of intercultural skills for future engineers and ensuring that as they enter the global workforce they are better able to tackle challenges both through how they work in virtual teams and what they do as engineers.