Nowadays, organizations increasingly rely on global virtual teams, bringing together people who collaborate across countries, cultures, and time zones. While such collaboration is beneficial in many respects, it also creates cultural, organizational, and technological challenges. Through a hands-on approach combined with reflective practice, the course prepares students to contribute to and lead collaboration in global virtual teams.

At the core of the course are six online sessions in which students work in small groups with peers from another university. These sessions simulate the realities of global virtual teamwork: negotiating, collaborating, and problem solving in online settings, across cultural and geographical boundaries. The experiential component is supported by in-class input, student presentations, and group discussions that provide frameworks and concepts from intercultural communication, intercultural management, and video-mediated interaction. By combining hands-on experience with reflection and analysis, the course helps students understand the dynamics of virtual teamwork and develop strategies for effective collaboration across cultures in a globalized world.

The course is taught in ENGLISH.

Please note that the six online sessions will be recorded for educational purposes within this course. 

Students must join the six online sessions with a computer, webcam, and stable internet connection to ensure they can speak and participate actively.

After completing this course, participants will be able to:

•          Define “intercultural communication” as a complex concept and discuss its relevance to global virtual teams.
•          Demonstrate awareness of their background, preferences, and practices, and reflect on how these influence collaboration in diverse in-person and online settings.
•          Discuss the features, benefits, and limitations of different tools for online collaboration.
•          Identify, describe, and analyze challenging moments in video-mediated interactions.
•          Develop a higher degree of empathy and reflective ability, tolerance of ambiguity, and the ability to deal with diversity, and apply it in intercultural situations.
•          Apply concepts from the fields of intercultural communication, intercultural management, and video-mediated interaction in analyzing real-life challenges in global virtual teamwork.
•          Implement strategies for facilitating effective teamwork across cultural and geographical boundaries.

Attendance is required for all sessions (students may not miss more than one online session and, at the same time, no more than 20 % of the scheduled course time).

You will receive further details from your course instructor at the start of the course.

The course will involve interactive teaching methods, including cultural simulations, group discussions and presentations.

The assessment of the course will include the following components:

• Class participation (20%)
• Group assignment (40%)
• Individual written assignment (40%)

Grading key (points/percent)

• 90 - 100   Sehr gut (1 - Excellent)
• 80 - 89     Gut (2 - Good)
• 70 - 79     Befriedigend (3 - Satisfactory)
• 60 - 69     Genügend (4 - Sufficient)
• < 60         Nicht genügend (5 - Fail)

You will be informed about the assessment details and criteria during the course.

This course is open to students who would like to acquire Global Mindset credits.

PLEASE NOTE: Waiting list registration applies to this course.

This means you first sign up for the waiting list within the specified time frame. The number of places in the course is set to "0" during this time - this does not mean that the course is booked out at that moment. Places will be assigned on a first come, first served basis.

Please log in with your WU account to use all functionalities of read!t. For off-campus access to our licensed electronic resources, remember to activate your VPN connection connection. In case you encounter any technical problems or have questions regarding read!t, please feel free to contact the library at readinglists@wu.ac.at.