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Internationality/Geographic distribution of teams
| Problem | Because the cultural background of participants has a strong influence not only on their social experience but also on their knowledge and skills, it is necessary to take their institutional affiliation into account when assigning groups. |
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| Framework | Case study solution, participation of students from different institutions, participation of international partners, uncertainty about personal characteristics of the participants, group assignment is directed by a teacher or is even carried out by a teacher |
| Solution | The assignment of participants into groups can be based on a number of criteria. Besides expertise, internationality or geographical distribution of group members is the central criterion for the combination of participants in groups. Generally, institutional affinity is accepted as a proxy both for geographic location as well as of cultural background of the participants. While nowadays it is quite common that participants from one institution or of different nationalities, exact information about participant’s backgrounds are often unavailable before the start of a VCL project. At the same time, students from one institution share the same academic culture, regardless of their nationality. In order to achieve truly international/interinstitutional project collaboration, each team must contain participants from different institutions. To maximise this aim, it would be possible to put into each group one member of each institution. However, in such an extreme scenario, some students may experience discomfort, especially if they are naturally shy or need to work in a foreign language. It is thus advisable to try to put at least two students from one institution into each group. The students always have a participant from their own institution for support. Given an optima group size of 4-6 members, each group can contain participants from up to three partner institutions. There is no experience regarding preferable nationality combinations. Besides ensuring internationality/interinstitutionality of groups, it is also necessary to consider the gender of group members. Ideally, the number of men and women in one group should be similar. However, this criterion is considered secondary to ensuring an equal distribution of students from different institutions and often cannot be kept. |
| References | Expertise as Criteria of Team Assignment |
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