Analysis of students open feedback after their participation in a multinational design project

Abstract

Participation by students in multinational engineering design projects is an activity that has been implemented at academic institutions with the objective of exposing the students to globalization. Such collaborations are becoming a very important practice that prepare students to be aware of the various aspects that are faced whenever work is performed in a global environment. There have been several approaches for the implementation of these activities in the curriculum, and the one presented here is an engineering design project conducted with the participation of students from six different countries. As an assessment of the students' experience, three specific open-ended questions were asked at the end of their participation. These questions cover the basic information of like-dislike-recommendation regarding the collaborative experience. Proper interpretation of responses to open-ended questions is a complex task, and several approaches have been reported. Data analytics technique of topic modelling is utilized in order to get an objective assessment. Based on the valid responses post-event (n = 95) from the participants to the three basic questions, together with the corresponding demographic information, the feedback is evaluated and conclusions are drawn regarding the effect of ethnicity, which is directly related to geographic location. Positive feedback related to the value of the international experience, negative feedback related to logistics, and recommendations related to communication have been identified based on ethnicity grouping. These conclusions validate previous ones drawn based on numerical feedback on motivation, and will be utilized to improve the offering of a similar multinational collaboration engineering design project to students.