Intercultural and interdisiplinary communication skills as a component of engineering education: International design projects

Abstract

Companies are designing and manufacturing products around the world and engineering businesses became global enterprises. Partnerships are formed with professionals from diverse cultures and backgrounds as business relationships are expanding. Each technical discipline and unique culture creates a wide range of interaction challenges. Good communication practices are essential for successful product development and business connections. Lack of successful procedures could result in a loss of business and, in some cases, even bankruptcy of a company. Communication is a mix of verbal and non-verbal interactions and etiquette. Therefore, the engineering students need to practice and to enhance their skills in communication, while working with projects in teams with students from other countries and cultures. In this paper, the authors describe their international projects where students from Denmark and the USA work together. For the USA students, it is a part of their senior design capstone course and for the Danish students it is an innovation and an interdisciplinary project, so called the Innovation Pilot [1]. The key learning objectives for training communication skills in order to work in global teams and manage projects are as follows: • To understand the elements of culture and intercultural communication that impact the development of new technology and business interactions. • To learn how to apply a model of understanding any culture, including one's own. • To enhance students' skills in the dimensions of intercultural competence. The authors give an account of their experiences for three semesters with three collaborative teams of students developing new high-tech test equipment for the engine test cell, which is located at Purdue University's School of Aviation and Transportation Technology. The focus in this paper is global interaction during the project work. The different phases of communication are described and analyzed. The paper concludes with the instructors' and students' lessons learned and recommendations concerning their experiences to communicate with each other long distance, across disciplines, and different time zones.