Culturally-mixed group-project: comparison of students' experiences and perspectives at two campus locations
Creators: name: Rhamdhani, Akbar
name: Kapoor, Ajay
Publisher: name: Swinburne
Year: 2024

description: A culturally-mixed group-project has been embedded in a third-year undergraduate Heat Transfer subject in a Mechanical Engineering Program at Swinburne at Hawthorn (Australia) and Sarawak (Malaysia) campus. The ultimate goals of this practice are to provide students with experience of working with others of different cultural background and to raise their own cultural perspective, which hopefully build their intercultural communication skills and further expend their international perspective. This paper shares the experience and findings from the study from the first two years, particularly comparison of students' experience and perspective at the two locations. This study was carried out to investigate whether the students get the benefits from the culturallymixed group project and also to identify challenges faced at the two locations. A culturally-mixed group project was run for 7 weeks within the semesters. The groups (of 3-4 students with at least one international expert) were required to study, research and compare sustainable energy sources to deliver energy for domestic purposes in remote locations in Australia (or Malaysia in the Sarawak campus) and overseas. Linking the overseas location with the international experts (which is expected to be the international students) in the group encouraged twoway dialogue between students within the group and provided an international context. The students' experience and perspective were explored by drawing data from two surveys (before and after the project) and a focus group (at the end of semester) carried out at both locations. The students' perspective on the group project and its purpose was found to be positive. High percentage of students felt that the project had encouraged them to engage more deeply with students from different background. In particular, all the international students in the 2009 study thought that the project has made them more confident in working and studying with other students from different backgrounds. The responses from the Sarawak students were much more positive in almost all aspects investigated. The results maybe contributed by the smaller number of students in the class in the Sarawak campus with more homogeneous student demographic. Additional challenges were identified from the study which originated from diversity in a wider sense, e.g. different cohorts (which has different level of maturity, commitment and motivation), local vs non-local students of different cultural background (including those regional, interstate and international students); mature and pathway students. A more effective group work with diverse students can be achieved provided that appropriate preparation and management of the project were carried out carefully. The students' experiences and perspectives in the Sarawak location appear to be more positive which attributed to the less number of students and the more homogeneous composition of the students. This was proportional to the level of support the students received for carrying out the activities (e.g. low student to mentor ratio).