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Enhancing professional skills among engineering students by interdisciplinary international collaboration: Engineering Education for Sustainability
Umeå University, Faculty of Science and Technology, Department of Applied Physics and Electronics.ORCID iD: 0000-0002-9283-9246
School of Business and Law, Edith Cowan University, Perth, Australia.
School of Business and Law, Edith Cowan University, Perth, Australia.
Umeå University, Faculty of Science and Technology, Department of Physics.ORCID iD: 0000-0001-7881-2496
2023 (English)In: Book of Proceedings for the 51st Annual Conference of the European Society for Engineering Education: Engineering Education for Sustainability, Proceedings / [ed] Ger Reilly; Mike Murphy, Balázs Vince Nagy; Hannu-Matti Järvinen, SEFI , 2023, p. 2486-2495Conference paper, Published paper (Refereed)
Abstract [en]

Providing necessary knowledge and skills for engineering students to become successful professionals is a tricky task. Besides disciplinary knowledge, e.g., communication skills, ability to work in teams, and international experience are often mentioned as important. Regarding internationalization, most engineering programs in Sweden rely on either student exchange or low-level internationalization-at-home, such as international literature and lecturers. This paper explores sustainable international experiences for students on their home turf provided through an international interdisciplinary collaboration where engineering students in Sweden and marketing students in Australia work together on a project. The setup simulates a consultancy firm with development and marketing offices in different countries that cooperate to launch an application for the Australian market. The paper is based on interviews and surveys with students and teachers participating in this, since 2017, ongoing project.

Findings reveal that students encountered several challenges that are hard to simulate in an ordinary university setting, e.g., language barriers, cultural differences, time differences, differences between disciplines, and varying work habits and values. The results also highlight opportunities such as learning from each other's perspectives and expertise, developing a more professional approach, presenting to people from other industry backgrounds, and gaining a better understanding of different cultures. The results show that the students gain professional experience that is of great value for their future profession. From a teacher's perspective, the paper discusses important issues when setting up an international inter-disciplinary collaboration, e.g., alignment of exercises, building a common ground, and the need for flexibility.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
SEFI , 2023. p. 2486-2495
Keywords [en]
interdisciplinary experiences, international experience, teamwork
National Category
Pedagogy Pedagogical Work
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:umu:diva-218658DOI: 10.21427/NFBV-3930Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85179840903ISBN: 9782873520267 (electronic)OAI: oai:DiVA.org:umu-218658DiVA, id: diva2:1822937
Conference
SEFI 2023, 51st Annual conference of the European Society for Engineering Education, Dublin, UK, September 11-14, 2023
Available from: 2023-12-28 Created: 2023-12-28 Last updated: 2023-12-28Bibliographically approved

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Mejtoft, ThomasBlöcker, Christopher

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