Global collaboration in course delivery: are we there yet?

ABSTRACT

Some recent experiences with Global Educational Collaborations have given me occasion to reflect on how sustainable such initiatives are, and whether they will over time become embedded in the fabric of modern University education, especially for courses such as Global Software Engineering. Swigger and colleagues argue to the contrary at least for now, observing that "technical barriers such as unreliable software and institutional regulations discourage most teachers from exploring distributed learning" [1]. But does this pessimistic view truly recognize the realities of the age? For Giddens "one of the dominant characteristics of modernity is the separation of time from space made possible by the standardization of time across the world", with "human efforts to standardize temporal frameworks inscribed in official time zones" [2]. Is a Global Collaboration then, inherently a product of the trend towards universal time, wherein time is the scarce resource of 'clock' time (based on what might be termed a temponomic world view [3, P.61].

REFERENCES

• 1: Swigger, K., Brazile, R., Harrington, B., Peng, X. and Apaslan, F. Teaching Students How to Work in Global Software Development Environments International Conference on Collaborative Computing: Networking, Applications and Worksharing, 2006 (CollaborateCom 2006), IEEE, Atlanta, Georgia, USA, 2006.
• 2: Wanda J. Orlikowski , JoAnne Yates, It's About Time: Temporal Structuring in Organizations, Organization Science, v.13 n.6, p.684-700, November 2002 [doi>10.1287/orsc.13.6.684.501]
• 3: McGrath, J. and Kelly, J. Time and Human Interaction: Toward a Social Psychology of Time The Guilford Press, New York, 1986.
• 4: Olson, G. and Olson, J. Distance Matters. Human-Computer Interaction, 15 (2000), 139--178.
• 5: Daniels, M., Berglund, A. and Petre, M. Reflections on International Projects in Undergraduate CS Education. Computer Science Education, 9 (3) (1999), 256--267.

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  K. Computing Milieux
  K.3 COMPUTERS AND EDUCATION
      K.3.1 Computer Uses in Education
          Subjects: Distance learning

Additional Classification:
  K. Computing Milieux
  K.3 COMPUTERS AND EDUCATION
      K.3.1 Computer Uses in Education
          Subjects: Collaborative learning

General Terms:
Human Factors