Within the experiential learning cycle, students engage in realistic tasks ... [11] describe. Peer-Assisted Teaching in Computer Science (PASTICS) .... Teams select their own management ..... of your grade if you don't measure up or educating.
Providing Experiential Learning through Transnational Teamwork Kirsten Wahlstrom School of Computer and Information Science University of South Australia Adelaide
Susan Tyerman School of Computer and Information Science University of South Australia Adelaide
Abstract - The requirement for high standards of professionalism in graduating Computer Science and Information Technology students suggests the applicability of experiential learning. This paper describes a capstone course that includes an assessable project based on the experiential learning framework. The project requires transnational teamwork and community engagement which engages students in a culturally inclusive learning context and highlights their capacities to contribute to the wider community. Students develop cultural and social sensitivities, a heightened awareness of risk impact, problem solving capabilities and objective self-analysis. Course and teaching evaluation data demonstrate the effectiveness of this assessment approach. Reflection upon the literature enables the innovative features of this assessment approach to be identified. Keywords: computer science education, professional aspects, international teamwork, global communication skills, experiential learning.
1
Introduction
Increasingly, organisations are evolving from traditional, comparatively inflexible bricks and mortar infrastructures to more adaptable hybrid workplaces constrained more by the boundaries of their telecommunications networks than by their physical locations. This trend motivates a requirement for IT practitioners skilled in international collaboration [1]. Kolb’s experiential learning cycle [2] is a valuable tool in courses delivering such skills [3] and was one of the practices recommended by the ITiCSE’99 Working Group on Professionalism [4]. Kolb [2] conceptualised experiential learning as a knowledge-creating process grounded in the experience of adapting to an immediate and challenging context. It comprises four stages: concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualisation and planning. Within the experiential learning cycle, students engage in realistic tasks that offer opportunities for responding to risk and for reflective observation, which in turn leads to the development of knowledge. This paper presents an experiential learning approach used in Professional Computing (PC), an undergraduate capstone course at the University of South Australia
Rebecca Witt School of Computer and Information Science University of South Australia Adelaide
Kylie Jarrett Flexible Learning Centre University of South Australia Adelaide
(UniSA) in which we embed experiential learning, realistic risks and virtual teamwork within a transnational context. The assessment tasks include a team project with a community-based organization as a client which requires students in geographically dispersed cohorts to collaborate.
2
Related work
The literature reports approaches to experiential learning that include team projects with transnational teamwork and team projects with real clients. We now report a representative selection of these approaches. Transnational teamwork has recently emerged as an application of experiential learning. While much of this work has emerged from the engineering disciplines [5-8] there has been some interest from CS and IS. For instance, Ferratt & Fogel [9] present a model for situating effective work behaviour within a culturally diverse professional IS context. Also, Damien et al. [10] provide a framework for teaching software development in a transnational context. Daniels et al. [11] describe Peer-Assisted Teaching in Computer Science (PASTICS) and Runestone, two interesting approaches to teaching experiential learning through transnational collaboration. Under the PASTICS model, masters students in Helsinki teach the Java programming language to third year students in Marseilles. The Runestone model is interesting as it involves transnational teamwork: third or fourth year US and Swedish students work in transnational teams to design and prototype a web interface for the navigation of a steel ball through a maze by tilting the maze in two dimensions. Finally, Miliszewska & Horwood [12] report a final year transnational project in which students develop software for a real client. The literature reports many approaches to providing experiential learning in collaboration with real clients. To more effectively teach risk management, Boehm & Port [13] eschew the Bloom taxonomy of educational objectives and favour CRESST, which provides a framework for team projects with real clients. Goold [14] draws upon real clients to specifically deliver experiential learning objectives. Strayer [15] describes a project in which teams of students enrolled in IT and CS courses provide training and consultancy to faculty and staff at Lock Haven University of Pennsylvania. Fulbright & Routh [16] report an innovative experiential
learning project in which students manage and staff a corporation which delivers IT services to local organisations. Coyne et al. [17] engage their students in a team project which delivers a system design to a real client who provides intensive support for students. Koppelman & van Dijk [18] use a team project with real clients in the context of HCI teaching: teams analyse and design a prototype GUI for a new consumer product (frequently a hand-held or wireless device). We make a distinction though between projects with real clients and community engagement. The latter we consider must provide opportunities for students to personally experience societal issues and to develop an awareness of the contributions they are able to offer the wider community. Such engagement further enables productive and mutually rewarding relationships between universities and the communities in which they are situated. Community engagement has been successfully integrated into courses delivering experiential learning [19, 20] . Examples of community engagement projects are reported by Chaytor [21] and Fernandez [22]. In Chaytor’s project, students learn web development by creating websites for community partners, while Fernandez uses community engagement in his HCI teaching. However, to date no transnational teamwork projects with real clients that also offer community engagement have been reported in the literature. Our contribution, therefore, is to the ongoing development of transnational experiential learning models in Computer Science education.
3
Background
PC was designed in 1996 for delivery to co-located Australian students. In response to UniSA’s focus on teaching flexibility and offshore teaching initiatives, since 2001 PC has undergone considerable adaptation. It is currently delivered to a diverse range of local (internal), cross-institutional and external Australian and International students, as well as transnational students based at SIT International College, located in Malaysia. The course teaches a diversity of material and its assessment includes the team project, a major writing task, a case study and an exam. As PC is a capstone course, its students typically have extensive pre-existing knowledge. For example, teamwork and project management are taught in a second year software engineering course and web site implementation and maintenance are taught in an introductory first year course. Thus, the team project assumes that a broad range of existing skills is available to each team of students. As originally designed, the team project required co-located students to deliver presentations to real clients on an IT topic and to provide supporting documentation on a website. Clients have included primary and secondary schools, not-for-profit organizations, university staff and students, local government organizations and NGOs. This project provided realistic and risky experiential learning, with a
desirable emphasis on community engagement.
3.1
professional
practice
and
Motivations
As originally conceived, the team project required external and internal students to form teams within colocated cohorts. However, providing adequate support for teams of external students proved challenging. Typically, external students withdraw when other demanding commitments preclude continuing enrolment. While peer attrition was anticipated by students, its impact was frequently underestimated and led to deterioration in several teams of external students. We recognised that a change to the composition of teams was required to ameliorate the effect of external student attrition. In 2002 the transnational cohort joined the course. In 2002 and 2003, this cohort delivered presentations to other SIT-based student cohorts as identifying Malaysian community organisations willing to participate as clients proved prohibitively costly. We found this model unsatisfactory as it did not provide an opportunity for students to interact with real clients and failed to provide sufficient insight into student progress and assessment.
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Transnational teamwork
To improve learning outcomes, in 2004 we required transnational, external and internal students to participate together in teams, thereby providing a transnational context for the project, community engagement for the transnational cohort, improved support for external students and improving assessment visibility.
4.1
Project tasks
Under the transnational team project, internal students form groups and recruit transnational and external peers, leading to teams of approximately seven students. The team size is important as it creates a context in which teams must adopt formal management processes in order to achieve success. Teams select their own management style, with the stipulation that transnational and external students adopt leadership roles, maintaining project schedules and allocating tasks to teammates. The project’s tasks include: • reflection on individual capabilities, identification of an opportunity to measurably improve professionalism via the team project and planning to measure any improvement • establishing the team membership • strategizing for effective team management, including risk management, equitable workload allocation and effective scheduling • prioritising a list of clients • instigating and maintaining contact with the allocated client, exploring requirements and facilities in the preparation of the presentation • reviewing the academic literature relating to the presentation’s topic • delivering the presentation
designing, implementing and deploying a client feedback tool and reflecting on the feedback to identify possibilities for future improvement • the development and maintenance of a web site for assessment (discussed further below) • reflection on whether the planned improvements to individual capabilities are observable • reflection upon and review of teammates’ contributions and performance • and assessment of other teams’ submissions. Thus, several roles for team members emerge including leadership, administration, client liaison, research and delivery of the presentation, risk management, feedback and client evaluation instrument design and development, feedback analysis, web site design, and project management and administration. Three meetings with tutors are scheduled throughout the project. At these meetings, teams are required to report on their practices, accomplishments, risk management and goals. Tutors are thus enabled to actively guide progress and may opt to consult or intervene with interested parties as necessary. This precaution ensures that client demands are reasonable and student engagement is monitored.
evaluations and observations.
4.2
The structure of the project provides concrete experience of the risks associated with professional practice. The project requires students to liaise with community groups across South Australia. This role is important as it equips teams with requirements, constraints and risks for their own project and a realistic experience of client interaction. It requires a high standard of professionalism that the students readily acknowledge and provide. However, some clients do not provide comparable levels of professionalism, resulting in occasional rescheduling, topic re-definition and last minute re-arrangements. We have also observed projects in which a client has requested an inordinate commitment from their team. Internal and occasionally external students deliver the presentation. As this task is conducted at the client’s organization it is risky and our students have encountered network failures, power failures and unexpectedly large audiences. In competently managed teams such risks are identified early and either mitigated or planned for. Challenges such as these are unplanned and symptomatic of the project’s design. Client feedback attests to the students’ success under difficult circumstances: We had an exceptionally difficult time as the whole school network was down. The students worked particularly hard to install software on 5 computers with CDs in 2 rooms and to operate a small group structure throughout the session. Well done - a great 'real life' learning task. The transnational context of the project team also provides concrete experience of negotiating cultural and geographical distance. Such challenges provide students with opportunities to reflect, plan, and engage in negotiation and in conflict resolution. However, it also prompts negative feedback from those students in teams that have not adequately engaged in the activities of the
•
Project deliverables and assessment
The project assesses individual contributions and teamwork. Each team prepares a web site that documents their project. The web site is peer-assessed under staff moderation and includes presentation materials, planning, reporting and research. Peer-assessment of the team project takes place at an individual and a team level and it contributes 35% of the course assessment. Of these marks, 18.5% is allocated to team performance as evidenced by the documentation provided on a team’s web site. The peer-assessment requires each team to assess two other teams’ web sites using a standard marking scheme that is published in the first week of semester. The remaining 16.5% is allocated to individual students, based on contributions to research on the presentation topic and anonymous feedback from the rest of their team’s members. As noted above, teams’ internal students meet with tutors on three occasions for guidance and feedback. If tutors determine that a team’s progress or commitment has been unsatisfactory they may opt to apply a moderation factor of value less than one. Should such a team’s performance improve, this moderation factor may be rescinded. This approach has been a very effective motivator. Furthermore, it ensures that peer-assessment does not deviate dramatically from staff assessment and it contributes to the defence of any final marks that are contested.
4.3
Project review
At the close of each semester we meet to review the course and its assessment, an activity which has enabled us to make several improvements to the team project. We examine qualitative and quantitative data including student, tutor and client feedback, course and teaching
5
our
teaching
experiences
and
Experiential learning
The experiential learning paradigm demands students are challenged by their learning context. In a recursive framework, students engage in risky experiences, reflect, develop new or better approaches, and improve their practice. In PC, experiential learning is provided by the complexities of the team project. Teams identifying, reflecting on, conceptualising and planning responses to the project’s challenges engage in the four stages of Kolb’s [2] experiential learning cycle and have greater cohesion and success. A clear identification of which tasks deliver each of the four aspects of the experiential learning paradigm requires detailed analysis. As some tasks are ongoing, some recursive, and others singular, clearly delineating the various functions they provide within the framework is an intricate undertaking and beyond the scope of this paper. However, a useful perspective is provided through discussion of the experiential learning cycle.
5.1
Concrete experience
experiential learning cycle. The following succinct comment provides an example: Too many items of work - distracting. [Online] teamwork - did not work (distance and language barriers). Comments such as these attest to the efficacy of the concrete experience provided by the team project. They are also key to ongoing planning and improvement. In this case, the comment motivates a requirement for the early identification of disengaged teams, perhaps via more detailed reporting, which will enable timely and informed tutor guidance and, in the worst cases, intervention.
5.2
Reflective observation
The range of feedback mechanisms designed into the project enable reflective observation of practice. At the beginning of the project, students reflect on their individual capacities to identify a skill deficiency, the improvement of which is then strategized. The course content includes performance metrics and students assess and reflect upon their skills and performance in the team project. In the weeks leading up to the presentation, teams design a feedback tool suitable for their audience. This task enables students to distinguish between evaluating the presentation’s content and its delivery, and between the use of open and closed questions. Audience feedback is collected, evaluated and reported on the team’s website. At the end of the project, individual students conduct performance measurements and then reflect and report on the success of their skill improvement strategy. In addition, teams receive feedback on their overall performance from the client, tutor and peers. These rich feedback mechanisms facilitate reflective observation before, during and after the project and are fundamental to the learning, as evident in student feedback: …it forced me to view my work from an outsider’s perspective. Knowing the other team members fairly well (as one knows most people after three years at the same campus) means that you tend to look at things from the viewpoint of someone who thinks in a similar way to you because of common educational and often cultural backgrounds. Involving an international student forced me to view things another way in order to phrase or structure group communication techniques so that they were helpful for everyone. The project thus encourages students to identify and reflect on their practice while offering opportunities for further development based on individual needs.
5.3
Abstract conceptualisation
In order to manage the project to completion, students must be able to conceptualise the emergent complexities of the client environment and the transnational learning context. Success relies on anticipating potential problems and suitable responses to a variety of contingencies. This
kind of risk management is challenging as few students have any experience of this aspect of professional practice. Leadership and team management are important to successfully conceptualising these risks. Effectively led teams seek tutor advice and schedule meetings for risk identification, mitigation and contingency planning, however, given the students’ experience, even these detailed attempts produce mere estimates. Thus, serious crises emerge that require reflection, discussion, negotiation and planning, all further enriching the risk management experience. To achieve a successful team management model, teams need to develop conceptualisations of the various roles, the skills and capacities available to the team, and how these can be organized to satisfy the needs of the project. This links to the recognition of individual learning needs which occurs as students nominate themselves for particular roles within a team.
5.4
Planning
The context of a transnational virtual team environment adds complexity to the planning process. As a physical presence is not necessary, SIT and external students often conduct the design and maintenance of a team’s web site. This can be demanding as cultural and communication problems, along with differing expectations with respect to autonomy, initiative and individual responsibility come to the fore. As the web site is the project’s assessed deliverable and poor design and maintenance can drastically affect a team’s grades, these tasks are highly important and poor execution creates significant tension. Part of the planning process requires teammates working to motivate and ensure each other’s commitment to the project. A team’s approach to leadership impacts on its capacity for effective planning. Some teams nominate a leader, some rotate the team’s leadership, and others do not allocate a leader at all. Teams appointing a leader for the duration of the project create success through effective planning, improved risk management, effective interaction with clients and teammates and timely project management. Our experience is that teams with poor planning are teams with poor feedback from peers and clients. Planning, or learning to plan, is vital for success in this project. In this brief overview of how PC’s team project has actualised the experiential learning cycle, the detailed and comprehensive learning context emerging from transnational teamwork with real clients is evident.
6
Discussion
As noted above, at the close of each semester we examine qualitative and quantitative data so that we may identify opportunities for improvement and reflect on our practice.
6.1
Qualitative data
Qualitative data includes feedback from clients, students
and colleagues. While positive feedback enables us to identify features for retention, we closely examine negative feedback so that we can identify opportunities for improvement, which are discussed at length prior to implementation. 6.1.1 Client feedback Each time the course is delivered we solicit feedback from clients so that we may further improve existing relationships with community partners and continue to build the course. Clients are typically appreciative and generous in their assessments: I was very impressed with the team. [They] worked well together and were keen to meet our needs within the context of their requirements. Staff enjoyed the session and found it valuable. Clients are also satisfied with the students’ capacity to manage the complex dynamics of each project. They remain keen to continue their involvement in the project indicating its success in developing professional practice in students, as evident in these three comments: The experience for us was most positive and we would welcome another team of students based on the workshop you ran today. The College would love to have a group back again!! I was impressed by their confidence, enthusiasm and organisation. Their 'professionalism' and delivery were two aspects which were highly positive. 6.1.2 Student feedback Each semester, we solicit feedback from students via the standard UniSA course evaluation survey. Student reflections indicate that the transnational composition of the team project provides the challenges and learning opportunities as was designed. Two internal team members from the 2005 cohort commented: This is the first time I have ever done a group project of this scale, and at such a professional standard. Our team was international, which made communication a little harder, but was actually quite interesting when comparing thoughts and opinions. And Personally, it was great to have an opportunity to share the group’s ideas with our international member and to bring this perspective to the group’s weekly meeting. An SIT student from the same year commented: By taking this course, it has [enlightened] my experience where I have learned how to be a good team player in the way of communication and cooperation. Last but not least, my best wishes to all the team members and thanks for welcoming me into this dynamic and cooperative team as well as being a part of my life. I am glad and thankful that you guys and girl are my fellow teammates. Although student feedback is usually positive, we have also received valuable negative comments which inform the ongoing development of the team project. Prior to the
introduction of the transnational working context of the team project, many negative comments were related to making the team project more realistic, such as this comment from a 2001 student: [The course needs a] better simulation of a work environment. Students don't receive any direct reaction to their competence, diligence or lack thereof. As there is no immediate response to their work, some students, will not meet their professional obligations due to the lack of immediate 'punishment'. Either staff involvement, e.g. lose part of your grade if you don't measure up or educating students more on how to deal with [assessing] their individual contributions would be warranted. Comments such as these are highly informative, enabling ready identification of opportunities for improvement and directly lead to innovative learning, teaching and assessment approaches such as the one described here. 6.1.3 Colleague feedback Colleagues are enthusiastically supportive of our efforts and we have received a UniSA Citation for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning and a nomination for a Carrick Award for Australian University Teaching, one of the highest commendations available to Australian teaching practitioners. Although feedback from colleagues is diverse, the examples we provide here highlight the team project’s inclusivity outcome. Associate Professor Carole Alcock, the Associate Head of School (Teaching and Learning) comments: The team project task requires students to interact with a real client, with real needs and difficulties, and with real deadlines, preparing them for life as a graduate…This approach fosters their independent learning: external and offshore students are now actively engaged with the course, not only with the project but with other individual assessment, and also with their peers Dr Wayne Piekarski, Co-Director of UniSA’s Wearable Computer Laboratory, comments: Frequently, remote students feel isolated from the course cohort, and lose motivation to remain engaged with a course. I find the international team project a particularly novel solution and the collaboration has been shown to be highly effective: the remote students remain engaged with the course, and the student experience is improved by gaining a connection with other students Finally, Associate Professor Brenton Dansie, Dean of Teaching and Learning in the Division of Information Technology, Engineering and The Environment, comments: We are very keen to provide opportunities for students to feel genuinely engaged in the UniSA community. This is one of the best examples that I have seen of how this can be achieved by having students from different circumstances genuinely working together on an interesting and challenging task.
While such feedback is gratifying, the quantitative student feedback sheds light on the effectiveness of course and assessment improvements over time.
80 60
Quantitative data
100 80
Student Rating
40
The standard UniSA course evaluation survey has ten questions and the students respond on a 5-point Likert scale. During processing, data are translated to a scale of -100 to 100 for all courses. Higher scores indicate greater agreement among the respondents to the statement under consideration. The questionnaire’s responses are entered via an online tool which permits staff to benchmark their course against others in the same disciplinary field. Between 2001 and 2006, we have observed improvements for all ten questions, eight of which place PC in the first and second quartiles when compared with other IT courses at UniSA. However, here we present the data for the four areas we consider to be most relevant to the team project: overall student satisfaction, opportunities to pursue own learning, feedback and workload. An increase in overall student satisfaction has been evident in an improvement of 22%, with students generally nominating the two highest satisfaction ratings (see Figure 1). This outcome places PC within the second quartile when compared with other UniSA IT courses.
Student Rating
100
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Figure 2: Student perceptions of teaching providing opportunities to pursue own learning, 2001-2006 Over the same period, an 18% improvement in student satisfaction with feedback has been measured (see Figure 3). The data indicates an improvement in 2004, when the transnational working context was introduced to the course, another climb in 2005 and a slight drop in 2006. 100 80 60 40 20 0 -20
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6.2
strategizing, measurement and reporting activity.
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Figure 3: Student satisfaction with feedback, 2001-2006
-60 -80 -100 2001
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Figure 1: Overall student satisfaction, 2001-2006 Satisfaction clearly drops when the transnational context for the team project was introduced in 2004. Although we have no means of investigation, we attribute this to students’ existing expectations being challenged by the new transnational context. However, satisfaction in 2005 exceeds former levels. This overall improvement is traceable to the introduction of the transnational working context to the team project, as there were no other substantive changes to the course during this period. The course evaluation data also suggests that the team project has had a positive impact on student perceptions of the ways in which teaching provides opportunities to pursue their own learning, with a 16% improvement over the same period (see Figure 2). This outcome also places PC with the second quartile when compared with other UniSA IT courses. We credit this improvement to students’ engagement in the reflective observation, abstract conceptualisation and planning aspects of the experiential learning cycle and to the effectiveness of the individual skill reflection,
While the improved data of 2004 and 2005 are directly attributable to the reflective observation aspect of the experiential learning cycle (as provided by the transnational project) we believe this drop is due to the 2006 class being much smaller than previous years (the average class size for 2003-2004 was 203 students while the 2006 class had only 48 students). With fewer students enrolled there was less diversity among the submissions and consequently weaker peer feedback. Finally, students are increasingly considering the workload reasonable; an improvement of 38% can be observed (see Figure 4). This outcome places the course in the first quartile when compared to other UniSA IT courses. The data climbs when the transnational project is introduced in 2004 and again in 2006. The actual workload was not changed during this period and the introduction of the transnational learning context clearly added complexity to the project. We attribute this improvement to the team project’s peer review process. As grades depend partially on peer feedback, students are motivated to contribute equal workloads and this leads to a perception of reasonable workload. Students who would normally leave their contributions to the last minute must work more regularly if they are to earn good peer reviews. This leads
to tasks being completed in a timely manner, a significant benefit of which is the prevention of eleventhhour stress and overwork. On the other hand, those students who are industrious by habit observe teammates contributing diligently and are able to adjust existing expectations that teammates must be compensated for if success is to be achieved. 100 80 60
Student Rating
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Figure 4: Student perceptions that workload is reasonable, 2001-2006. Furthermore, as this project is the only transnational learning context encountered by IT students at UniSA, we suggest that its novelty may also have contributed to this outcome. We have observed that students find the challenges of this project engaging and we suspect that this engagement and enthusiasm translates to a perception of reasonable workload.
6.3
Contribution
The intercultural aspects of this assessment are not only responsive to the demands of industry [9, 23] but also produce an inclusive classroom environment which supports the social, cultural and academic experiences of all students [24]. The connection between experiential learning in a transnational context and reflective practice is apparent in Ferrat & Fogel’s 1998 investigation [9] of desirable learning outcomes for global IS specialists which recommends the provision of reflection-based workshops for students to consider cultural differences. Similarly, Damien et al. [10] require students working in transnational teams to reflect upon shared understandings. Furthermore, assessment of team projects with real clients is favourably reported in the literature [25]. In addition to the experiential learning outcomes, it provides opportunities for students to build their resumes, evaluate their career choices, and to understand how theory relates to practice (stimulating their commitment to learning). Hatcher and Bringle ([26] in [20]) link reflective observation of community engagement to learning opportunities that provide deeper understanding of course content and enhanced perceptions of civic responsibility. Many of the projects reported in the literature (see [13] or [27] for examples) require reflective observation as the relationship with the community organisation comes to a close. The team project described here provides the learning opportunities identified by Hatcher and Bringle in a new
assessment approach in which community engagement and reflective observation are tightly integrated within a transnational, experiential, learning context. Individual students deeply reflect on their skills, planning for improvement and measuring outcomes. They also reflect on the performance of their teammates as they conduct the peer review. When providing course feedback, they reflect on the team project experience and report difficulties they may have encountered. Finally, working in their transnational teams, students reflect on other teams’ submissions and their own work as they conduct the peer assessment activity [28]. The realistic, risky working context of this project enables students to develop their capacities for international collaboration as it provides experience of and reflection upon cultural practices, communication and peer motivation. It also fosters the problem-solving capacities and adaptability essential for impending professional challenges [9, 23]. The transnational context of the team project establishes a variety of challenges that students are unlikely to encounter elsewhere in a UniSA IT program. First, the rich diversity of problem-based activities demanded by the project require students to manage their own learning as they identify what needs to be done and how best to achieve it. Second, there are no other IT courses at UniSA in which students are required to collaborate with geographically dispersed peers. Success in the project demands that students independently reflect on their communication practices and preferred team structures in order to effectively establish communication with their transnational and external peers. All of these outcomes are considered good practice in IT education as they reflect the current employment demands of industry which increasingly involve work in transnational teams, critical problem-solving capacities, and non-technical ‘soft skills’ such as interpersonal communication and intercultural sensitivity.
7
Conclusion
As evidenced by the feedback received from clients, students and colleagues, students engaged in the transnational team project are working inclusively in a culturally diverse context, developing team management skills, effectively working and communicating with real clients, and conducting peer assessment. But most importantly, through the experiential learning cycle of the project, students are also developing reflective practice and are gaining knowledge that is grounded in responding to a realistic and risky learning context. By challenging students with the experience of managing transnational virtual teams, Professional Computing has developed a learning environment from which students can draw many skills and orientations to support their professional practice in the IT industry. It offers a model for delivering quality learning experiences and outcomes.
8
References
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