An international student/faculty collaboration

Abstract

Students of today need to be prepared to work in globally distributed organizations. Part of that preparation involves teaching students to work effectively in teams to solve problems. Students also must be able to work with individuals located at distant sites where there is no or very little face-to-face interaction. The Runestone project, an international collaboration between two universities, adds new dimensions to student teamwork, requiring students to handle collaboration that is remote, cross-cultural, and technically challenging. Runestone is a three-year project funded by the Swedish Council for the Renewal of Undergraduate Education. A pilot study in 1998 was followed by a full-scale implementation in 1999 with another implementation ongoing in 2000.Each time this global cooperation project is run, both students and faculty learn important lessons in how to work with each other in a virtual environment. This paper discusses both student and faculty learning outcomes for Rnnestone 1999.

A Reflection on the First Run of the Runestone Project at Tongji University: Observations on Cross Cultural Distributed Teams vs Face to Face Teams

“…Last et al [6] investigated the obstacles encountered by the students in the Runstone project offered between UU and Grand Valley State University in US (GVSU) in 1999. These obstacles were listed in order of decreasing importance as follows: poor communication, member nonparticipation, poor leadership, lack of technical skills, procrastination, and differences in motivation.…”

ITiCSE 2010 working group report motivating our top students

“…The Runestone project was an example of collaborative work carried out which involved two international universities. 'The projects' primary goal was to provide international collaboration into Undergraduate Computer Science Education in away that has value for all participants' [123].…”

Learning from students

“…For all of the Runestone instances reported here, the software development project has involved designing and implementing a distributed real-time system to navigate a steel ball through a board with a maze by tilting the surface of the board via positioning motors. This project, called Brio [2,11], has evolved somewhat over the semesters.…”

“…The project has been the basis for a number of separate studies. Study A has focused on the software development process [3][4][5][6], while Study B has focused on group development in virtual teams [7][8][9][10][11]. As researchers, we are an "invisible" presence in the courses; that is, we are not the teachers involved and none of the students ever see us.…”