<p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:
normal"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">Seeking Non-US Collaborators
for Virtual Teams Project</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">We invite you to have your class(es) participate in a
multicultural virtual team learning activity.<span style="mso-spacerun:
yes"> </span>The project task focuses on establishing information
requirements for a multinational, non-profit scenario and is designed to
provide learning opportunities for a variety of students including those
focusing on IT, computer science, business, engineering and the social
sciences.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>We invite you and your
students to participate.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>We have
run six successful projects to date involving over ~2000 students from 8<span style="color:red"> </span>countries and 18 universities.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The project will take five weeks to complete and will run
from Oct 4 – Nov 7.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Students work
in small collocated subteams of ~ 5 members from their class; each subteam is
paired with another subteam of ~5 students from a class in another university
to form an overall virtual team of ~ 10 students.<span style="mso-spacerun:
yes"> </span>The project is well-structured, and includes three learning
modules on effective teaming in partially distributed teams, each with weekly content
and group process activities and deliverables (see <a href="https://collab.ist.psu.edu/pdtinfo">https://collab.ist.psu.edu/pdtinfo</a>).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>The final project deliverable is a
written report describing the functional requirements for the system, as well
as prototype designs of the user interface and dashboard. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Instructor support materials are included (e.g., weekly
teaching notes, ppt slides) and an online synchronous training session for
instructors is held prior to the start of the project.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Using a pre-defined grading rubric, all
assignments will be graded by assistants at Penn State. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Of course, you are welcome to grade
deliverables, assign grades, and customize presentation of the materials to
your students. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>To encourage
evenness of participation across courses, we ask all instructors to weight the
project at least 15% of the course grade.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">A system is provided to support team collaboration, using
Moodle as the platform (<a href="http://moodle.org/">http://moodle.org/</a>).<span style="mso-spacerun:
yes"> </span>The collaboration system includes a discussion board, file
share/repository, chat, and a team calendar, as well as all instructions and
all project materials<span style="color:red">.</span> It supports both <span style="mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">within-subteam and across-subteam
work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Instructors can log on and
view all project materials, as well as monitor their students’ progress. </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>All administrator functions are handled
by Penn State.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Student comments regarding the project include:</p>
<ul style="margin-top:0in" type="disc">
<li class="MsoNormal" style="color:black;margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;
line-height:normal;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1;tab-stops:.5in 1.0in 1.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in 3.5in 4.0in 4.5in 5.0in 5.5in 6.0in 6.5in 7.0in;
mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none">“I had a great time
interacting with the US team members.”</li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="color:black;margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;
line-height:normal;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1;tab-stops:.5in 1.0in 1.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in 3.5in 4.0in 4.5in 5.0in 5.5in 6.0in 6.5in 7.0in;
mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none">“I think that this was a
good experience and that I will definitely take away a lot of good lessons
from this. I feel that I will be better prepared when I have to do
something similar to this in the real world.”</li>
</ul>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:6.0pt">Comments from instructors include:</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;
margin-left:.5in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l1 level1 lfo2"><span style="font-family:Symbol;mso-fareast-font-family:Symbol;mso-bidi-font-family:
Symbol"><span style="mso-list:Ignore">·<span style="font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"">
</span></span></span>Thanks for the chance for me and my students to
join the PDT project. I look forward to joining your next PDT project.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;
margin-left:.5in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l1 level1 lfo2"><span style="font-family:Symbol;mso-fareast-font-family:Symbol;mso-bidi-font-family:
Symbol"><span style="mso-list:Ignore">·<span style="font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"">
</span></span></span>The teaching notes and training session were
really helpful…the project was smooth.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;
margin-left:.5in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l1 level1 lfo2"><span style="font-family:Symbol;mso-fareast-font-family:Symbol;mso-bidi-font-family:
Symbol"><span style="mso-list:Ignore">·<span style="font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"">
</span></span></span>My students believe that this has been a
positive experience.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:6.0pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;
margin-left:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt">This is an exciting project that
students both enjoy and learn from.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</span>Please contact Rosalie Ocker at <a href="mailto:rocker@ist.psu.edu">rocker@ist.psu.edu</a>
for further information.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">We look forward to you and your students joining this project.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Sincerely,</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt">Rosalie
Ocker</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"> </p>