Concept Proposal for Integration of Virtual Team

• Introduction • Concept Proposal – Description – Use Case Scenario(s)

– Impedimets • Conclusion

ICT enables real-time communication across any distance, extended the space for collaboration and increased the rate of informational exchange around the globe. ICT enables new possibilities and creates opportunities and promotes further technological innovation, standardization and globalization by fostering intra- and inter-enterprise mutual collaboration.

ICT offers many ways for collaboration that allow reducing induced costs. ICT allows collaboration of people across geographical boundaries and connects individuals stemming from diverse cultures and different mentalities and triggers the phenomenon of cultural shock by forced interaction of people from nations, languages and cultures.

The availability of soft skills necessary for multicultural environment has become the key to achieving innovation and sustainable successful existence of business entities. A concept for a study subject facilitating the collecting of experiences in virtual teaming is proposed aiming to enhance education with inventive activities and to provide a higher added value for students for their future professional path. Involvements of students into virtual teaming enriches students with experience in a real world of intercultural communication, time zones, time management and virtual teaming. They provide an invaluable experience that can be later efficiently exploited by the students’ future employers.

Ambition: • to foster the involvement of students in international multicultural environment in time of their studies and provide them with priceless experiences of cultural clashes and the impersonality of virtual environment • to support the increase of tolerance against other cultures and nations • to widen their horizons in the area of biases and prejudices they have and are not aware of. Study of managerial and business sciences includes several study subjects allowing initiation of teams and solving of assignments in team work. Such practice provides students with experiences of issues occurring in teams that provide room for training and development of soft skills necessary for team leading and team management.

Teams built with study fellows from the same group of students attending the same particular subject are likely to build fast as students know themselves as they see each other regularly. Collaboration with unknown persons in a virtual team provides a completely different invaluable experience that may develop their soft skills in a far greater extend and it represents a unique opportunity to foster international relationships across cultural differences. It represents the possibility of gaining international multicultural experience by a greater group of people than a student exchange program accessible to only a limited number of people. The Concept aims to increase the pool of possibilities to gain international multicultural experience in current global intertwined environment.

… Common Collaboration Platform / Information System

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Architecture: • Common collaboration platform • Combinable study subjects to provide assignment for teams for elaboration • Collaboration among participating institutions in terms of subject leading, organization and assessment of assignments

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Students of University 2

Common Collaborative Platform / Information System

… Students of University 1

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Premises: • Universities provide similar at least one study subject part that is comparable or can be combined. • Use of the same virtual collaboration platform allowing collaboration of students across boundaries of institutional affiliation.

Students of University n

Working environment

Building teams

Elaborating assignment(s) in common working environment

• Lecturers agree on common assignment(s) for teams built across academic institutions. • Students are provided with access to the common collaborative platform and meet in the virtual environment to build teams on voluntary base or be divided into such. Variations: • Each team consists from only one student of one academic institution targeting the experience of a pure virtual teaming.

• Each team consists from of at least two students of one academic institution targeting the experience of the differences between local and virtual teaming.

Teams work in virtual environment and experience obstacles and by trying to overcome those they gain learn new persons from different locations, train their skills in technical proficiency as well as develop their soft skills in terms of virtual teaming. Such collaboration may: • Foster the collaboration among nations and academic institutions. • Contribute to intercultural tolerance, miscellaneous habits and customs. • Develop soft skills of leading and/or participating in a virtual team. • Enhance communication skills in foreign language. • Train technical proficiency with collaborative systems. • Provide the experience in collaboration with another academic institution and study program that may offer a student/lecturer hosting or exchange in future.

Possible impediments that may hinder such collaboration: • Incompatible collaborating platforms • Incompatible study subjects • Incompatible organization of semesters • Language barriers • Cultural barriers • Time shift • Divergent understanding and assessment of assignments • Insufficient support of team work engagement • Too many teams • ICT and network break downs, outages, bad quality of connection/transmission…

ICT provides innovative ways for academic institutions to design innovative study programs and subjects. A concept of a possible integration of virtual team experience into a study subject was proposed. It targets the enhancement of academic studies with providing international multicultural experience to a broad group of individuals supporting the development of tolerance among cultures and nations in current global environment.