Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/406930
34 November/ December 2014 BizEd recommended improving the aesthetics of online user account pages and adding reminders to buy products like light bulbs and air filters. Another year, teams met executives at Daimler AG's Mer- cedes-Benz bus and truck manu- facturing plant in Istanbul, Turkey. The company had asked students to recommend ideas for designing a truck marketable in developing countries. Instead, the winning team recommended that the com- pany create a social network to allow truck drivers to connect via onboard computers. That shows just how creative the students can be, says Taras. "This team's solu- tion wasn't what the company asked for," he says, "but execu- tives still chose it as the winner." Although most X-Culture projects come from large com- panies, Taras recently included a project from a small bike shop in Greensboro that wanted to mar- ket its used bike recycling services beyond North America. Although he feared that no student teams would choose to work on a proj- ect from such a small operation, nearly 200 chose the bike shop. "At first, it was a disaster!" says Taras. "The bike shop had students calling every five minutes, and we were getting calls from Mercedes-Benz and Home Depot asking why their projects weren't more popular." Now that Taras knows students are interested in small business projects, he plans to include more such dilemmas in the future, as well as those from nonprofits and the arts. Putting It All Together It's a huge task to run X-Culture each semester, but Taras receives administrative support from the Bryan School, from the Florida Institute of Technology in Mel- bourne, and from participating professors who volunteer to help as needed. One of Taras' biggest challenges is scheduling, because different schools follow different academic calendars. Students at schools whose semesters start latest—such as those in Europe and Australia— begin working on their projects on their first day of class. Students at schools whose semesters end earli- est—such as those in the U.S.—end their projects on their last day of class. That means that American students spend the first few weeks preparing for the project, but their semester ends before they have time to give final presentations; German students jump into the project immediately, but have time for final presentations in their last weeks. Throughout the semester, Taras monitors the performance of the teams and collects the data they submit. He sends all professors weekly records of their students' performance and peer evaluations. Whenever possible, X-Culture faculty meet in person at AIB con- ferences to coordinate their efforts and discuss grading rubrics. Taras sets only one grading requirement that all participating faculty must follow—team projects and peer evaluations each must count for at least 20 percent of students' final grades. "Other than that, we leave grading up to the professors," says Taras. In this way, X-Culture cre- ates an environment much like a real-world globally distributed workplace, says Taras, where people can come from different subsidiaries and companies, and so, are evalu- ated and compensated differently. Massive Open Online Teams Taras had initially designed the project for undergraduate inter- national business courses, but the project now attracts undergradu- ates and MBA students in equal numbers, as well as students in other disciplines such as psychol- ogy and engineering. The fastest- growing segment in X-Culture now comprises EMBA students and full-time employees seeking inter- national experience. Before the semester begins, Taras receives enrollments from participating faculty and creates X-Culture students visiting the Home Depot headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia.