Facilitating Multicultural Student Team Engagement in Higher Education

Abstract

This chapter introduces a three-phase model of multicultural online project team development in order to engage students in digital learning environments in higher education. To develop this phase model, we explored existing challenges and strategies of multicultural digital project teams by conducting a systematic literature review. We examined previous empirical studies, from 1998 to 2014, focusing on culturally diverse online project teams in higher education. The literature review identified several critical factors that affect the processes of culturally diverse online project teams. By synthesizing these critical process factors, we created an integrative phase model within the multicultural online project team processes, categorizing them into either a task or a socio-emotional process. The findings suggested that cultural diversity in teams negatively impacted the process factors, such as communicating, trust building, establishing expectations, intercultural learning, and knowledge sharing.