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- Bergman, Becky, 1970, et al.
(författare)
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Forming effective culturally diverse work teams in project courses
- 2017
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Ingår i: 13th international CDIO conference proceedings CDIO, June 18-22 2017, Calgary. - 1796-9964. - 9780889533998 ; 2017:13, s. 508-518
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- A culturally diverse student population at Master’s level is a reality at many universities today, as it is at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden. However, a common issue is the lack of interaction between home and international students, which counteracts university goals of fostering intercultural cooperation. This paper will discuss and evaluate a pilot project in one Master’s program in production engineering, where activities around group diversity were integrated into a company-based project course. Students were assigned groups where a mixture of backgrounds and expertise were prioritised.The project used a number of group dynamics activities including a pre-survey of expectations of group work; negotiating a group contract; and continuous peer group assessment in order to develop and reflect on the skills required in a culturally diverse work team.From reflective essays that students wrote, as well as interviews carried out, the project and tasks were evaluated. The following themes were identified: attitudes to diversity; the importance of well-functioning communication; and attitudes and roles within the group.Results show that students found this a challenging but useful environment to work in and found the group dynamics activities helpful in negotiating this environment. Continuous peer group assessment, in particular, was seen as helpful in providing a forum for feedback and discussion on individual performance in the group and challenges for the group as a whole.Recommendations include constructive alignment within the program in terms of clear goals, activities and assessment, in order to build up these skills and awareness, not only in a single course but throughout the program.
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| 2. |
- Bergman, Becky, 1970, et al.
(författare)
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Integration activities in the culturally diverse classroom: crossing the divide
- 2017
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Many universities have a culturally diverse student population yet face challenges in integrating home and international students successfully. This workshop will present activities and courses underway at both Chalmers and KTH to aid integration. Participants will be involved in discussion and activities concerning intercultural awareness in the classroom with a view to working with these skills with both students and faculty.
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| 3. |
- Bergman, Becky, 1970, et al.
(författare)
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Intercultural competence for all students: how prepared are our students for the global workplace?
- 2016
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- SHORT SUMMARY Many Swedish students have little contact with non-Swedish students in their education. This round table aims to discuss examples of good practice at Chalmers and elsewhere, and look at how intercultural competence can become part of the learning goals at both course and program level. ABSTRACT Chalmers students study in a multicultural environment and will work in a global environment. This is an environment which involves meeting, communicating with, negotiating with, and cooperating with a range of cultures in different companies and different countries. The ability to deal with such meetings in a constructive way is vital when team members and work colleagues come with experiences and expectations different to one’s own. Technical universities in Sweden are in a paradoxical situation in terms of intercultural communication. On the one hand, technical universities are more international in terms of students, teachers and researchers and the work market is one of the most culturally heterogeneous. On the other hand, many teachers see their subject as objective and free from cultural dimensions and they feel little responsibility for the university’s explicit goals on global competence and cultural diversity. Activities connected to these goals seldom have any merit in an academic career. Where activities in intercultural communication take place, they are often directed at non-Swedish students. Consequently, it is possible for Swedish students to complete their education at Chalmers with very little contact with students from other countries. Comments from the International Student Barometer 2014 show that non-Swedish students do not feel part of an international environment at Chalmers. An UKÄ project carried out in 2015 consisting of interviews and questionnaires, showed that Chalmers at Master’s level can be a segregated environment with students choosing to sit and work with their own nationality groups. Clearly, there is a need to work actively with intercultural competence within the programs to support students’ awareness. There is also a need for learning activities and learning goals where intercultural competence is included. This round table discussion is designed to discuss possible initiatives that can be taken and how these can be assessed within the framework for engineering education. The following questions are presented for the workshop discussion: · What examples are there at Chalmers of successful integration of Swedish and non-Swedish students? · What strategies are used / can be used to create this integration? · How is it possible to integrate a global perspective in teaching? · How is it possible to use the cultural diversity in a teaching situation?
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| 4. |
- Bergman, Becky, 1970, et al.
(författare)
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Making the culturally diverse classroom work: Activities for successful groups
- 2019
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Ingår i: SEFI 47th Annual Conference: Varietas Delectat... Complexity is the New Normality, Proceedings. ; 2019, s. 2036-2038
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Motivation for attending and learning outcomes of the sessions As universities become increasingly internationalized, many lecturers will have students with multicultural backgrounds (OECD, 2014). There are many advantages with a culturally diverse environment, not least that it reflects the nature of the global engineering workplace and that students broaden their perspectives but at the same time, lecturers need to take a critical look at their own material and approaches to best utilize this environment. This workshop is aimed predominantly at lecturers and administration and will discuss useful strategies for working with these students, with a focus on group work in engineering projects. Learning outcomes: - an increased awareness of the benefits and challenges of a culturally diverse work environment - a toolbox of activities to facilitate groupwork in culturally diverse student groups Background and rationale of the session Internationalisation is a key goal at many universities. This goal can be measured quantitatively, for example, achieving a critical number of international students across Master programs; however, counting numbers does not address what international students actually experience at the university. Neither does it address home students’ experiences of cultural diversity within the university setting. Recently, a number of initiatives to work with intercultural awareness at all levels have taken place at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden, driven by the goal, decided in June 2016, to create global perspectives and foster intercultural cooperation across all Master’s programs. Since project and group work is common in the workplace and subsequently in our educational structure, our initiatives have focused on groups in project courses. This is also where students are brought into closer contact with one another, yet this way of working may be unfamiliar for some students. Engaging session design, aligned with the learning outcomes Maximum number of participants: 30 The workshop will provide a sample of activities which have been implemented with culturally diverse groups. A key theoretical foundation for these activities is a non-essentialist, experience-driven approach to teaching intercultural communication (Van Maele and Mertens, 2009), which is discourse based, theory referenced and interaction oriented. The activities chosen for the workshop are those experienced as most effective by students (shown through student interviews and reflective texts), such as working with case studies and models for dealing with critical situations that arise (Bergman et al, 2017). The workshop’s discussions will be documented and made available to participants after the workshop. Participants will also receive copies of activities to take away with them. Activities in relation to learning outcomes: 1. the benefits and challenges of this environment: shared practice through discussion (approx. 20 mins) 2. a toolbox of activities (1): participants will experience some possible activities for inclusive group work as described above (approx. 45 mins). This will include: o strategies for forming teams with culturally diverse students o activities for the start, middle and finish of the project to encourage openness, trust and reflection 3. a toolbox of activities (2): participants will reflect on and share their own experiences (approx. 20 mins) Significance for Engineering Education As outlined in the SEFI position paper, “Substantial progress must still be made to achieve the SEFI vision: a state where engineering education is safe, inclusive and fully empowered by all segments of our societies - globally.” This workshop is a step towards that vision and towards internationalisation in practice to fully utilize the potential in culturally diverse teams (Freeman and Huang 2014). References: Bergman, Becky et al “Forming effective culturally diverse work teams in project courses”. In Proceedings of the 13th International CDIO Conference, Calgary (2017) Chalmers University of Technology (2016) Prioritised Operational Development Freeman, R. B., & Huang, W. (2014). Collaboration: Strength in diversity. Nature News, 513(7518), 305. OECD. (2014). Education at a Glance 2014: OECD Indicators. OECD Publishing.Retrieved from https://www.oecd.org/edu/Education-at-a-Glance-2014.pdf SEFI position paper on diversity, equality and inclusiveness (2018) Retrieved from https://www.sefi.be/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Diversity-2018-links.pdf Van Maele, J., & Mertens, K. (2014). Towards an experience-driven approach to teaching intercultural communication. IKSI Scientific Publishing House (Warsaw University) internationalisation; diversity; intercultural cooperation; group work
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| 5. |
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| 6. |
- Peterson, Lena, 1961, et al.
(författare)
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Intercultural group work: engaging diversity to enhance learning in an integrated engineering master's project course
- 2020
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Intercultural group work (IGW) has repeatedly been recognized as necessary for global understanding and citizenship (Carroll and Ryan, 2007). In Sweden, engineering graduates of all backgrounds need IGW skills for career success. For international engineering students studying in Sweden, such skills are crucial to gain employment in Sweden or Europe. We present an approach to supporting the development of IGW skills in a compulsory project course in an electrical engineering master’s programme with a mix of international and home students. The intended learning outcomes (ILO) for the course mix technical subject skills with general competencies, such as academic writing, ethics and team skills. A specific IGW-related ILO is reflecting on group work in an international team. Project teams (4-6 students) are formed by the teachers, including aspects like performance in previous courses, gender and national background, to provide more opportunities for students to engage in and reflect on diversity. To help students develop such reflection skills, teamwork is scaffolded through organised trust-building interactions, for example by including workshops and communication exercises with interspersed just-in-time lectures. A key concept is emphasising the process of project work in addition to the product. To that end, we have paired an iterative development framework (Scrum) with a formative/summative feedback model. This draws from Chalmers’ bachelor project courses, which use an integrated approach for general competencies (Saalman et al, 2009). We employ elements such academic-report drafts, writing assessment goals and rubrics, team agreement template and individual assessment of team members. Teachers within the course have distinct roles: the discipline teachers partake in assessing the students, while skills teachers provide support only. For example, when teams assess member contribution during the process, skills teachers facilitate, as they can take a confidential role, unconnected to assessment. This integration of roles demands collaboration between the teachers, which also contributes diversity to the course design process. In terms of results, interviews were carried out with some of the students at the start, end and a year after the course. Their reflections showed an awareness of the affordances and challenges of working in a multi-cultural environment. While it is not the case (or the goal) that the group work is conflict free as a result of these interventions, students seem to have assembled a small toolbox for engaging with and reflecting on IGW that they find useful as they start out in their professional life. Carroll, J., & Ryan, J. (Eds.). (2007). Teaching international students: Improving learning for all. Routledge. Saalman E., Peterson L., Malmqvist J. (2009) Lessons learnt from developing and operating a large-scale project course Proceedings of the 5th international CDIO Conference, Singapore Available: http://cdio.org/knowledge-library/documents/lessons-learned-developing-and-operating-large-scale-project-course
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| 7. |
- Stebbins, Randi, et al.
(författare)
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NB!Write: Crossing boundaries to create resilient writing programs
- 2019
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The roundtable directly addresses the theme of academic writing across and beyond the disciplinary discourses and audiences due to the unique composition of the NB!Write Network.NB!Write supports the development and integration of writing into different disciplines, including teacher education, arts and humanities, and STEM. By doing so, it creates room to address the challenges of adapting to new disciplinary discourses and audiences. We will structure the discussion around the themes of the network’s three working groups: Research, Teaching and Learning, and Sustainability and Impact. The roundtable will address these key questions. How do various national and local policies impact the conditions of writing? How do institutional models support or hinder writing across disciplines and audiences? What can network members learn from the variety of models used by member institutions? How do questions of audience and discipline relate to concerns around community languages versus English? To shed light on these questions, the members of the roundtable will include representatives from the NB!Write network who work with an array of models. These include independent writing centers, courses within university departments, and embedded support in ECTS courses. The interventions used by network members range from face-to-face tutoring by peers or staff to online feedback and tutoring, peer TAs in the classroom, workshops, bootcamps, retreats, clinics, etc. Attendees at the roundtable will be exposed to the diversity of writing across, between, and within disciplines in the Nordic and Baltic area. Importantly, they will leave with ideas on how to address these issues in their own contexts.
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