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<p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:
normal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Times;mso-bidi-font-family:
"Times New Roman";color:black">Seeking Non-US Collaborators for Virtual Teams
Project </span></b><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Times;mso-bidi-font-family:
"Times New Roman";color:black"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Times;mso-bidi-font-family:
"Times New Roman";color:black"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Times;mso-bidi-font-family:
"Times New Roman";color:black">We invite you to have your class(es) participate
in a multicultural virtual team learning activity. 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. We invite you and your students
to participate. We have run eight successful projects to date
involving over ~3000 students from 13</span><span style="font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Times;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";color:red"> </span><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Times;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";
color:black">countries and over 20 universities.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Times;mso-bidi-font-family:
"Times New Roman";color:black"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Times;mso-bidi-font-family:
"Times New Roman";color:black">The project takes five weeks to complete and
will run from May 30 – July 3. Students work in small collocated
subteams of ~ 4 members from their class; each subteam is paired with two other
subteams of ~3 students from a class in another university to form an overall
virtual team of ~ 10 students. 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"><span style="color:#7799BB">https://collab.ist.psu.edu/pdtinfo</span></a>). 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.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Times;mso-bidi-font-family:
"Times New Roman";color:black"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Times;mso-bidi-font-family:
"Times New Roman";color:black">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. Using a
pre-defined grading rubric, all assignments will be graded by assistants at
Penn State. Of course, you are welcome to grade deliverables, assign
grades, and customize presentation of the materials to your
students. To encourage evenness of participation across courses, we
ask all instructors to weight the project at least 15% of the course grade.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Times;mso-bidi-font-family:
"Times New Roman";color:black"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Times;mso-bidi-font-family:
"Times New Roman";color:black">A system is provided to support team
collaboration, using Moodle as the platform (<a href="http://moodle.org/"><span style="color:#7799BB">http://moodle.org/</span></a>). 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><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Times;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";
color:red">.</span><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Times;mso-bidi-font-family:
"Times New Roman";color:black"> It supports both within-subteam and
across-subteam work. Instructors can log on and view all project
materials, as well as monitor their students’ progress. All
administrator functions are handled by Penn State.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Times;mso-bidi-font-family:
"Times New Roman";color:black"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Times;mso-bidi-font-family:
"Times New Roman";color:black">Student comments regarding the project include:</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Symbol;mso-bidi-font-family:
"Times New Roman";color:black">-- </span><span style="font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Times;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";color:black">“I had a
great time interacting with the US team members.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Symbol;mso-bidi-font-family:
"Times New Roman";color:black">-- </span><span style="font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Times;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";color:black">“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.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Times;mso-bidi-font-family:
"Times New Roman";color:black"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Times;mso-bidi-font-family:
"Times New Roman";color:black">Comments</span><span style="font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";
color:black"> fr</span><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Times;
mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";color:black">om instructors include:</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Symbol;mso-bidi-font-family:
"Times New Roman";color:black">-- </span><span style="font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Times;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";color:black">As a
lecturer of long-standing I would like to add that it has definitely been one
of the best opportunities to engage my students. I was also very
impressed with the organisation of the exercise. First rate.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Times;mso-bidi-font-family:
"Times New Roman";color:black">-- The teaching notes and training session were
really helpful…the project was smooth.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Symbol;mso-bidi-font-family:
"Times New Roman";color:black">-- </span><span style="font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Times;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";color:black">My
students believe that this has been a positive experience.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Times;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";color:black"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Times;mso-bidi-font-family:
"Times New Roman";color:black">This is an exciting and timely project that
students both enjoy and learn from. Please contact Rosalie Ocker at <a href="mailto:rocker@ist.psu.edu"><span style="color:#7799BB">rocker@ist.psu.edu</span></a> for
further information.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Times;mso-bidi-font-family:
"Times New Roman";color:black"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Times;mso-bidi-font-family:
"Times New Roman";color:black">We look forward to you and your students joining
this project.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Times;mso-bidi-font-family:
"Times New Roman";color:black"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Times;mso-bidi-font-family:
"Times New Roman";color:black">Sincerely,</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Times;mso-bidi-font-family:
"Times New Roman";color:black">Rosalie Ocker</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>