Characterizing Students’ Intercultural Competence Development Paths Through a Global Engineering Program

Global competence is increasingly recognized as an important skill for engineering students to develop in preparation for their entrance into the engineering workforce [1], [2]. A variety of global engineering programs have been developed to achieve this goal [3], and several studies have assessed the outcomes of such programs [1]. To date, literature on global engineering programs has emphasized program overviews and assessment of student learning outcomes. Although outcomes-based assessment is important for the continuous improvement of such programs, recent critiques of global education research suggest that another perspective is missing from the literature [4]. Few studies explore student conceptions of their global programs and how students may experience the same program in different ways. Understanding variation in students’ experiences is important to developing effective global programs, particularly as educators seek to improve the diversity of such programs. To address this need, our study piloted a fully-integrated complementary mixed-methods approach to identify and characterize unique student paths through a single global engineering program.