Managing Telecollaboration among Engineering Students and Faculty: A Case Study from Two Spanish Universities

In today's globalized world, it seems important that students can telecollaborate in a team by making effective use of information and communication technologies. This collaboration format can positively influence their academic performance, enhance engineering student interest in the subject, and improve skills such as communication and teamwork. In this work a collaboration model between engineering students, and also between instructors, from two distant traditional universities is presented and analyzed. Potentialities, challenges and key elements for a viable experience are identified, that would be capable of achieving the proposed objectives, and sustainable over time. Considering these activities as projects, instructors are actively involved in the initiation, planning, monitoring and controlling, and closing of these activities. On the other hand, students are those who must perform scheduled tasks. This article identifies the difficulties and potentials for each of these roles.