Cross cultural group projects in higher education and its effects on business school students : A mixed method study of students and young professionals in the business field

Abstract: The purpose of this research is to improve the understanding of challenges encountered by students when conducting groupwork and more specifically cross-cultural groupwork; which in turn helps with identifying structural flaws in the way cooperative learning is organized in student groups. More specifically, this study aims at identifying the challenges and opportunities inherent to student group work in order to develop a framework allowing schools and universities to improve the way their structure this exercise. The objective is to find a way for students to experience group work almost as they would in a company in order to teach them key employability skills which are highly valued in the workplace. This study focuses on students and young professionals who had international experiences since both groups can provide insightful information on the challenges and opportunities related to cross-cultural group work. Overall, this paper contributes to better understand the challenges inherent to student group works which stem from motivational issues caused by disruptive behaviours. After explaining why these behaviours are specific to a student environment, we identified the structuration of cooperative learning among the studied organisation as being the main cause for these challenges faced by students. Our contribution then was to provide a new framework for student group work based on Smith’s 5 essential elements to properly structure cooperative learning. We also created a comparative table illustrating the main differences between conducting group work in a company and in a school which professional can use to better understand why students do not always know how to be good in group work. Two frameworks were produced, one is to be used by schools to better structure group work and limit the chances of disruptive behaviour while nurturing skills valuable in the workplace. The second framework provides insights as to why young professionals do not always know how to effectively work in groups even if they experienced it as students.