Assessing Collaborative Global Design Projects among Engineering Students from US and Latin America

Published in: Innovation and Development for the Americas: Engineering, Education, Research and Development: Proceedings of the 8th Latin American and Caribbean Conference for Engineering and Technology
Date of Conference: June 1-4, 2010
Location of Conference: Arequipa, Peru
Authors: Juan Pablo Banks
Jorge Duque
Ivan Esparragoza
Juan Manuel Lopez
Carlos Rodríguez
Refereed Paper: #76

Abstract

A collaborative network of institutions from US and Latin America has developed and executed collaborative global design projects as part of academic experiences for their students. The main goal of these projects is to foster international collaboration and to offer an opportunity to the students to develop professional skills through international teamwork effort in the solution of a design problem. There is anecdotal evidence that students have found the experience rewarding and successful; however, there is no a formal assessment approach to determine the effectiveness of this initiative in reaching the desired goal and objectives. This paper reports an assessment framework and proposed assessment tools for the collaborative global design projects carried out by the international collaborative network with the aim to evaluate the effectiveness of this approach and to explore option to enhance the content and delivery method of the projects.