VIBES develops the recommended skills for working in multicultural virtual teams by creating the educational content and processes which can be adapted for different levels of stakeholders in various contexts. This approach supports the creation and development of a series of modules or processes which can be prototyped and tested in collaboration with our partnership organizations. By co-creating the materials and process by collaborating the three levels of educational institutions (High School, Undergraduate and Master’s/professionals) we aim to create a logical development path within the learning environments which supports individual learning but also supports the interaction of the diversity of the virtual teams between these levels. This type of interaction reflects the actual diversity of prior educational experiences and can be adapted to support different types of learning experiences and targets.
We will develop a modular systematic approach to support implementation and future modification of these multicultural virtual teams modules as part of the open access goals of Erasmus+, so that other educational institutions might make use of these modules and extend their usefulness into other online business training situations. The issues of creating a virtual organization to address these challenges is a novel approach because it is tied to how our more digitally aware students understand how to align and mobilize awareness.
A series of courses or modules would be created and tested and adjusted to create a more concrete process. These courses would not be intended to create a new basic business manual, but rather to integrate and develop the creative and critical thinking of the students to understand how to initiate a business concept and to develop it into potentially testable areas to be piloted in the different partner countries. These modules of multicultural virtual teams will include different roles and targets so that different users might appreciate the differences in perspectives, goals and outcomes by coming into the problem spaces from either a different role or perspective, thereby increasing the awareness of how diversity directly affects the hard outcomes of a process but more importantly the soft skills required in the successful navigation the virtual environments.