Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/406930
35 BizEd November/ December 2014 OLEGGAN KO/TH I N KSTOCK teams of five to seven students each. As much as possible, he tries to ensure that each student on a team comes from a different school and country. However, while the diversity of each team is a prior- ity, he has found that the project works best when undergraduates are teamed with undergraduates, MBAs with MBAs, and executives with executives. The reason? Dif- ferences in attitude can magnify problems that naturally arise on virtual teams, overwhelming the project's learning goals. "It's not that undergraduates aren't as skilled as MBAs," empha- sizes Taras. "It's that, when we've tried mixing teams by experience level, the MBAs blame problems on the undergraduates because they think the undergrads are irrespon- sible or unskilled, and the under- graduates blame the MBAs for being too bossy. By keeping them separate, we don't have that extra level of diversity but the quality of the experience is still the same. Everybody is happier." Technical Differences Taras uses free online tools for X-Culture to ensure that all stu- dents can access the platforms even after they finish their projects. However, at the same time students are grappling with different time zones and cultural barriers, they also must overcome any differences in technological capabilities among their team members. Students in Ghana, for example, may not own a computer or tablet, so they must schedule time to use computers at a local library. Students in China or Iran may not have access to Facebook because of government censorship. Before the project begins, each student receives a 100-page PDF that discusses these issues and includes instructions for using tools such as Google Translate, Google Docs, Dropbox, Skype, and Face- Time. Students can opt to use as many or as few collaboration tools as they wish. Some teams might purchase access to a conferencing tool such as GoToMeeting; others might rely only on email. Before students can participate in the project, they must pass a one-hour online readiness test that measures factors such as English skills and technological literacy. Each year, about 300 students either fail the test or do not take it. In these cases, individual faculty members must provide an opt- out alternative, such as a research paper or local project. More Than Learning X-Culture also has become a vibrant platform for research. Using data they've collected in the course, faculty have published several papers, with nearly a dozen more under review, that explore the roles of factors such as cultural intelligence and interpersonal inter- actions in improving virtual team performance. Several now are writ- ing a textbook on how to use expe- riential learning in international business education. (See the results of one study in "Getting from Shirk to Work" on page 58.) In September, Taras won a US$75,000 grant from the Society of Human Resource Management to support the X-Culture team's research for the next two years. With X-Culture now entering its ninth semester, Taras plans to expand the project in several ways. He wants to create French- and Spanish-language tracks for the course—currently X-Culture is delivered only in English. He also would like to invite more student teams to meet with companies face-to-face, possibly by soliciting more stipends from AIB and spon- soring companies. His biggest objective is to have student teams vie for actual con- tracts. "If a team writes a winning marketing strategy for a game station company, we'd like that team to have the opportunity to find clients, sell that machine in the chosen market, and earn a commission," says Taras. "Real clients, real problems, real con- tracts—that's our ultimate goal." To learn more about X-Culture, X-Culture faculty research, or ways to participate, visit www.x-culture.org. The fastest-growing segment in X-Culture now comprises EMBA students and full-time employees seeking international experience.