A KCI Approach to Promote Intercultural Competencies for International Virutal Engineering Student Teams (InVEST)

Work in Progress: Engineering students need more than technical knowledge to meet the demands of the 21st century, they also require lifelong learning skills and inter-cultural knowledge. Intercultural learning is a global competence concept which is necessary for engineers to be able to work on complex global projects; immigrate to find work; collaborate and compete with multicultural colleagues; and work for international companies. Higher education institutions are exploring how to support and develop intercultural competences in students; however, in the engineering discipline studies are limited. Traditional study-abroad approaches have been adversely impacted by global events and challenges such as safety issues, health concerns, natural disasters, and political instability as well as students' financial and time constraints. In response, engineering education institutions and programs are exploring how to harness technology to satisfy academic and labor market needs in a scalable manner. This paper introduces the use of the Knowledge Community and Inquiry (KCI) pedagogical model developed by Slotta to design an inter-cultural learning course for student participants in the International Virtual Engineering Student Teams (InVEST) project. InVEST uses a blend of online social and collaborative experiential learning and synchronous video meetings to support students and educators involved in the project. The InVEST pilot project is aimed at bringing globally dispersed educators and their engineering students together to engage in cross-institutional and collaborative project-based learning via an online learning environment. The course is designed to assist students in gaining an appreciation of diverse cultures and working together on a project to co-construct new cross-cultural understanding.