Virtual, distributed courses to teach global software engineering: A cultural contrast of Germany, Japan, Mexico, and Mongolia

In addition to knowledge of distributed project management techniques, software engineering courses need to teach students the intercultural communication skills necessary to cooperate effectively with team members from different cultural backgrounds. Because many students do not have the time or financial resources to spend a semester in a foreign country, participation in virtual, distributed courses at their home universities can provide opportunities to gain international experiences for a larger group of students. Experiences, results and lessons learned from several iterations of distributed, virtual courses conducted between universities in Mongolia, Mexico, Japan and Germany are presented. Instead of classic, instructor-based lectures, a project-based learning approach was implemented to simulate a real-world, global software engineering project.