Project collaboration for student projects with locally distributed team-mates
a learning-by-doing approach of education
Preface
With more and more work in after school life is done in projects, preparing the students to meet the requirements needed must not only follow this trend, but should already take into account the latest trends and changes to the future work situations: work from everywhere, collaborate in projects with a locally dispersed, multi-cultural team is very likely becoming the “new-normal” for most of the knowledge-workers then. This trend will decouple the working-place from the living-place: The Cluster Theory of Michael E. Porter (Competitive advantage of nations) is becoming obsolete for more and more industries — or needs to be modified and supplemented with “virtual clusters”, with ICT-based networks of knowledge-workers and the ability to organize and to work in these networks will be a corner-stone of tomorrows competitive advantage.
Problem
Students -even in higher education- have far too less project experiences and no awareness of this form of future work. And if they have to do accomplish a given task in group-work, they often do not learn the basics of project-management or even learn something about the bottlenecks of collaborating in situations without face-to-face communication.
Solution
Learning-by-doing through project collaboration — with a strong focus on working with locally distributed teams (e.g.: creating teams with students from different cities from the very beginning)
Why Now
Broadband available, students used to communicate via their devices, global industries invest into Digital Workplace solutions and change their organizations into agile, often project-oriented corporations with global staffing
Our lesson-design: learning by doing via collaborating in a student project
Working in a project team with a locally dispersed configuration (often called: “virtual team”) is different.
By following the concept of 1.) teach & learn the theory → 2.) adapt the learned and the theory in a “learning-by-doing” approach, the students can make their own experiences for implementing a deeper and longer-lasting understanding.
Subjects of the course
For addressing the main problems of CSCW (Computer Supported Collaborative Work) the following set of subjects are a suggestion for assembling the basics of the curriculum of the course:
Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)
- Learning the theory, the rules for creating one and reasons why a WBS is useful
- Adapt the just learned knowledge for using it for the own project
Communication Theory
- Learning the basics of communication (especially the 2nd axiom of communication by Paul Watzlawick and the Communication-Square of Friedemann Schulz von Thun)
- Use the CFLX Clarity Communication Statements of the C-BOARD and discuss the working effects / mechanisms of action
Culture / personality
- Learn some theories and its shortfalls* of culture dimensions (Hall, Hofstede) and about personality assessments (DISC, Riemann-Thomann)
* stereotypes, personal/privacy rights - Check the Riemann-Thomann Assessment and discuss if the pros outweight the cons
IT-Competence / Computer Science
- Setting-up, administration and usage of a business project software once during a lesson (based on documentations and available video-tutorials)
- Adapt the learnt to the student project / and following projects
Final Words
I want to end this short paper with a quote I found at “the Science of Summit”:
”Educational success is no longer about reproducing content knowledge, but about extrapolating from what we know and applying that knowledge to novel situations.
Education today is much more about ways of thinking which involve creative and critical approaches to problem-solving and decision-making. It is also about ways of working, including communication and collaboration…”
— ANDREAS SCHLIECHER, OECD EDUCATION DIRECTORATE

Get the C-BOARD
The C-BOARD application is available for FREE, of course.
https://sourceforge.net/projects/opencboard/
It can be installed on most free webspace-providers and use a free smtp-service-provider for the needed email-sending capabilities.
Sources of related information:
http://www.c-cybernetics.com/pub/ICT-Filters-and-Solution.pdf
My twitter account: https://twitter.com/ccyberflo
