Enhancing intercultural effectiveness in international virtual student teams: an exploratory study

Internationalisation of higher education implies the need to prepare students to work in a globalized and culturally diverse environment by developing adequate intercultural competences. The present study focused on the behavioural dimension of intercultural communication competence and investigated whether the short-term experience of working on a project assignment in a virtual multicultural team could produce an increase in students' intercultural effectiveness. The study employed a single-group pre-test-post-test research design. The sample included 73 students representing 16 nationalities studying in Russian and Japanese universities majoring in business or economics. Students' responses on the Intercultural Effectiveness Scale (Portalla and Chen in Intercult Commun Stud 19(3):21-37, 2010) were collected before and after the project, and paired difference tests (ttest and Wilcoxon signed-rank test) were used for data analysis. Results indicate that that overall intercultural effectiveness of the students by the end of the project increased as compared to pre-test scores. Significant shifts were registered for five of the six dimensions of intercultural effectiveness: Behavioural Flexibility, Interaction Relaxation, Interactant Respect, Message Skills and Identity Maintenance. Findings suggest that virtual multicultural team assignments can contribute to the development of intercultural competence as a meaningful internationalisation outcome, and therefore may be an appropriate and cost-effective tool for enhancing internationalisation at home. Other implications for educators are discussed.