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A Comparative Evaluation of Global Virtual Teams to Traditional Study Abroad Programs in Engineering Education

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Conference

2012 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

San Antonio, Texas

Publication Date

June 10, 2012

Start Date

June 10, 2012

End Date

June 13, 2012

ISSN

2153-5965

Conference Session

Study Abroad, International Exchange Programs, and Student Engagements

Tagged Division

International

Page Count

14

Page Numbers

25.28.1 - 25.28.14

DOI

10.18260/1-2--20788

Permanent URL

https://strategy.asee.org/20788

Download Count

421

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Paper Authors

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Aaron G. Ball Brigham Young University

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Aaron G. Ball is a mechanical engineering M.S. candidate at the Ira A. Fulton College of Engineering and Technology at Brigham Young University. He is also concurrently a M.B.A. candidate at the Marriott School of Management at Brigham Young University. He graduated summa cum laude with a B.S. mechanical engineering degree from Brigham Young University, Idaho. Ball has previously worked in the automotive and aerospace industries. His current research is focused on identifying and validating global competencies for engineers and developing and evaluating educational programs designed to enable engineering students to develop global competence. He is a member of ASME.

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Alan R. Parkinson Brigham Young University

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Spencer P. Magleby Brigham Young University

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Spencer Magleby is a professor in mechanical engineering at Brigham Young University and in 2005 was appointed Associate Dean in the College of Engineering and Technology. Before coming to BYU, he worked in the military aircraft industry developing tools for advanced aircraft design and manufacture. He received a B.S. and M.S. from BYU and his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin. He has pursued research in design tools and processes, team formation and management, design education, and commercialization of new mechanism technologies. Magleby teaches design at the graduate and undergraduate level and is interested in educational partnerships with industry. He has been involved with the capstone program at BYU since its inception, has worked with the Business School to establish special graduate programs in product development, and helped to initiate a number of international programs for engineers.

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Randall Davies Brigham Young Univeristy

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Randall Davies is currently an Assistant Professor of Instructional Psychology and Technology at Brigham Young University. His professional experience includes ten years as a high school technology and mathematics teacher. He also worked for several years teaching computer science, evaluation, assessment, and research-related topics at the college level. His research involves program evaluation in educational settings with the general objective of understanding and improving the teaching and learning process. His research has a specific focus of evaluating technology integration, assessment policy, and educational practices.

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C. Greg Jensen Brigham Young University

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Holt Zaugg Brigham Young University

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Holt Zaugg will be completing a doctoral program in the McKay School of Education at Brigham Young University in the Educational Inquiry, Measurement, and Evaluation program in the summer of 2012. His research focuses on communication patterns of engineering students working on global, virtual teams, and test item measurement analysis using item response theory and confirmatory factor analysis.

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Abstract

AbstractA number of credible voices within the engineering community have expressed the needfor engineering graduates to develop global competence. Many colleges of engineeringhave addressed this need by developing various technical study abroad programs.Typically these programs are resource intensive and only reach a fraction of students. Forthe past two years we have been conducting research on the possibility of developingsome attributes of global competence without travel through global virtual (GV) teamswhich rely on internet-based collaboration. In this paper we present some preliminarydata where we compare GV teams to traditional study abroad programs. The data showthat for developing elements of global competence associated with teams, the GV teamexperience can be effective; however, for other elements of global competence, studyabroad programs achieve superior results.

Ball, A. G., & Parkinson, A. R., & Magleby, S. P., & Davies, R., & Jensen, C. G., & Zaugg, H. (2012, June), A Comparative Evaluation of Global Virtual Teams to Traditional Study Abroad Programs in Engineering Education Paper presented at 2012 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, San Antonio, Texas. 10.18260/1-2--20788

ASEE holds the copyright on this document. It may be read by the public free of charge. Authors may archive their work on personal websites or in institutional repositories with the following citation: © 2012 American Society for Engineering Education. Other scholars may excerpt or quote from these materials with the same citation. When excerpting or quoting from Conference Proceedings, authors should, in addition to noting the ASEE copyright, list all the original authors and their institutions and name the host city of the conference. - Last updated April 1, 2015