Since 2005 the Civil Engineering Department at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology (RHIT) has had at least one international capstone design project each year. For each of those projects, the student team worked on a project for a client in another country. This year the international project was designed by an international collaborative student team. Three students from RHIT were paired with three students from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in Ghana to design a project in Ghana. The academic grades for all six students were inextricably linked; therefore, the six were forced to work collaboratively in order to produce a successful design. In order to complete the project, the team had to overcome several new challenges. Although all six students spoke English, their dialects and accents were very different. Adding to the communication challenges was the need to work remotely. The students were unable to meet face-to-face. In addition, only the KNUST students were able to visit the project site, so they had to relay critical information to the RHIT students. The instructors also had to overcome challenges. The two schools were on different term schedules. The capstone design courses had different durations, learning objectives, and deliverables. Therefore, the instructors had to adapt their expectations and demands on the students in order to facilitate the collaboration within the team. This paper provides unique insights and lessons learned from both the student and instructor perspective. It shows how well the student team achieved the educational outcomes, and summarizes the benefits the students gained beyond technical skills. The paper concludes with recommendations for programs that would like to develop an international collaborative student team experience.
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