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The stated objective of the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are to serve as a shared blueprint for peace and prosperity around the planet. If this blueprint is to become a reality, the inclusion of the SDGs in university curricula is essential. Yet how can we be sure that we teach a unified and shared view of these goals? This paper examines the value of using virtual exchange in teaching the UN SDGs in Business School Design Thinking courses. Specifically, the experience of a partnered course run at both the Boise State University's College of Business and Economics and the Lebanese American University's Adnan Kassar School of Business serves as a case-study. Results from a survey of both student groups indicate that the experience of working with students from outside their home culture did improve their cross-cultural communication skills. Furthermore, learning about the SDGs was a valued experience. However, learning about the SDGs in collaboration with "foreign" team members was eclipsed by the broader experience of engaging with students outside their home culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much of the literature in the field of diversity serves to disentangle the seemingly conflicting impact of diversity on performance. While nonlinear models and models of external factors that either mediate or moderate the relationship have significantly advanced the field, we examine the use of decision trees as a novel way to model the relationship between diversity and knowledge sharing -- a recognized antecedent of performance. In order to demonstrate the power of decision trees, we study five types of visible diversity (age, gender, education level, religion, and region of origin) along with one measure of personality (anxiety). Using data collected within an academic institution, we show that decision trees can automatically find demographic faultlines that serve to predict levels of both explicit and implicit knowledge sharing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]