(1293.pdf) INTERCULTURAL COLLABORATION IN STUDENT PROJECT TEAMS-BARRIERS AND OPPORTUNITIES AT AALBORG UNIVERSITY?

摘要

In recent years there is much emphasis on the group work at educational institutions due to manyeducational benefits associated with this method of teaching and learning like team work,interpersonal skill, communication, negotiation skills, leadership and intercultural understanding.Working in teams of collaborative groups is considered as one of the essential skill of theengineers in this age.Aalborg University is famous for Project based learning (PBL) in Engineering education. In thePBL learning environment, the students work in the forms of groups on real life projects. Projectactivities require an intensive collaboration and communication among group members. There isalso increase in the enrolment of international student at many western European universities. Inthis context, it will be interesting to explore the issues in inter-cultural collaboration andcommunication in mixed groups of both local Danish and international students.A study conducted by Du and Hansen (2006) identified five challenges or barrier for thedevelopment of intercultural learning at Aalborg University, which were: language barrier, differentbeliefs about learning, perceptions about group work, miscommunication in the management ofgroup projects and collaboration issues. Especially, this study pointed out that there is a lack ofcollaboration between Danish and the international students in the groups. This paper will take thepoint of departure from the study of Du and Hansen and study the learning environment and inparticular the factors leading to intercultural collaboration in the groups.This paper will be based on qualitative data from Aalborg University. It is part of a Ph.D. A projectfor which the authors will be using the mixed method approach. The data for that will be collectedthrough continuous observation of the group and in depth interviews with participants.