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Providing necessary knowledge and skills for engineering students to become successful professionals is a tricky task. Besides disciplinary knowledge, e.g., communication skills, ability to work in teams, and international experience are often mentioned as important. Regarding internationalization, most engineering programs in Sweden rely on either student exchange or low-level internationalization-at-home, such as international literature and lecturers. This paper explores sustainable international experiences for students on their home turf provided through an international interdisciplinary collaboration where engineering students in Sweden and marketing students in Australia work together on a project. The setup simulates a consultancy firm with development and marketing offices in different countries that cooperate to launch an application for the Australian market. The paper is based on interviews and surveys with students and teachers participating in this, since 2017, ongoing project. Findings reveal that students encountered several challenges that are hard to simulate in an ordinary university setting, e.g., language barriers, cultural differences, time differences, differences between disciplines, and varying work habits and values. The results also highlight opportunities such as learning from each other's perspectives and expertise, developing a more professional approach, presenting to people from other industry backgrounds, and gaining a better understanding of different cultures. The results show that the students gain professional experience that is of great value for their future profession. From a teacher's perspective, the paper discusses important issues when setting up an international inter-disciplinary collaboration, e.g., alignment of exercises, building a common ground, and the need for flexibility.

Programming has gradually become an essential skill for engineers and scientists across disciplines and is an important part of the CDIO Syllabus covering fundamental knowledge and reasoning. Recently, there has been a shift away from introductory programming languages like C and Java towards Python, especially in programs where the focus lies on handling and analysing large quantities of data, such as energy technology, biotechnology, and bioinformatics. This paper illustrates the successful setup of a one-week-long introductory Python programming course with a hands-on approach. Given the limited time, a challenge is how to effectively teach students a meaningful set of skills that enables them to self-guide their future learning. Moreover, since the course does not include any summative assessment, we need other means of measuring students’ learning and guiding course development. We address these challenges by coupling short lectures with short quizzes for formative assessment, adding another learning activity to the course. We find that, in the absence of summative assessment, short, frequent quizzes with immediate feedback are an excellent tool to track the learning of a class as a whole. Students report that the quizzes, albeit challenging, improved their understanding of programming concepts, made them aware of potential mistakes, and were a fun learning experience. Furthermore, the results from this paper illustrate how a new programming language can be taught to students without prior programming skills in a short period of time. We summarise our lessons learnt for designing and integrating quizzes in short-format programming courses.

Providing necessary knowledge and skills for engineering students to become successful professionals is a tricky task. Besides disciplinary knowledge, e.g., communication skills, ability to work in teams, and international experience are often mentioned as important. Regarding internationalization, most engineering programs in Sweden rely on either student exchange or low-level internationalization-at-home, such as international literature and lecturers. This paper explores sustainable international experiences for students on their home turf provided through an international interdisciplinary collaboration where engineering students in Sweden and marketing students in Australia work together on a project. The setup simulates a consultancy firm with development and marketing offices in different countries that cooperate to launch an application for the Australian market. The paper is based on interviews and surveys with students and teachers participating in this, since 2017, ongoing project. Findings reveal that students encountered several challenges that are hard to simulate in an ordinary university setting, e.g., language barriers, cultural differences, time differences, differences between disciplines, and varying work habits and values. The results also highlight opportunities such as learning from each other's perspectives and expertise, developing a more professional approach, presenting to people from other industry backgrounds, and gaining a better understanding of different cultures. The results show that the students gain professional experience that is of great value for their future profession. From a teacher's perspective, the paper discusses important issues when setting up an international inter-disciplinary collaboration, e.g., alignment of exercises, building a common ground, and the need for flexibility.

Providing necessary knowledge and skills for engineering students to become successful professionals is a tricky task. Besides disciplinary knowledge, e.g., communication skills, ability to work in teams, and international experience are often mentioned as important. Regarding internationalization, most engineering programs in Sweden rely on either student exchange or low-level internationalization-at-home, such as international literature and lecturers. This paper explores sustainable international experiences for students on their home turf provided through an international interdisciplinary collaboration where engineering students in Sweden and marketing students in Australia work together on a project. The setup simulates a consultancy firm with development and marketing offices in different countries that cooperate to launch an application for the Australian market. The paper is based on interviews and surveys with students and teachers participating in this, since 2017, ongoing project. Findings reveal that students encountered several challenges that are hard to simulate in an ordinary university setting, e.g., language barriers, cultural differences, time differences, differences between disciplines, and varying work habits and values. The results also highlight opportunities such as learning from each other's perspectives and expertise, developing a more professional approach, presenting to people from other industry backgrounds, and gaining a better understanding of different cultures. The results show that the students gain professional experience that is of great value for their future profession. From a teacher's perspective, the paper discusses important issues when setting up an international inter-disciplinary collaboration, e.g., alignment of exercises, building a common ground, and the need for flexibility.

Programming has gradually become an essential skill for engineers and scientists across disciplines and is an important part of the CDIO Syllabus covering fundamental knowledge and reasoning. Recently, there has been a shift away from introductory programming languages like C and Java towards Python, especially in programs where the focus lies on handling and analysing large quantities of data, such as energy technology, biotechnology, and bioinformatics. This paper illustrates the successful setup of a one-week-long introductory Python programming course with a hands-on approach. Given the limited time, a challenge is how to effectively teach students a meaningful set of skills that enables them to self-guide their future learning. Moreover, since the course does not include any summative assessment, we need other means of measuring students’ learning and guiding course development. We address these challenges by coupling short lectures with short quizzes for formative assessment, adding another learning activity to the course. We find that, in the absence of summative assessment, short, frequent quizzes with immediate feedback are an excellent tool to track the learning of a class as a whole. Students report that the quizzes, albeit challenging, improved their understanding of programming concepts, made them aware of potential mistakes, and were a fun learning experience. Furthermore, the results from this paper illustrate how a new programming language can be taught to students without prior programming skills in a short period of time. We summarise our lessons learnt for designing and integrating quizzes in short-format programming courses.

Programming has gradually become an essential skill for engineers and scientists across disciplines and is an important part of the CDIO Syllabus covering fundamental knowledge and reasoning. Recently, there has been a shift away from introductory programming languages like C and Java towards Python, especially in programs where the focus lies on handling and analysing large quantities of data, such as energy technology, biotechnology, and bioinformatics. This paper illustrates the successful setup of a one-week-long introductory Python programming course with a hands-on approach. Given the limited time, a challenge is how to effectively teach students a meaningful set of skills that enables them to self-guide their future learning. Moreover, since the course does not include any summative assessment, we need other means of measuring students’ learning and guiding course development. We address these challenges by coupling short lectures with short quizzes for formative assessment, adding another learning activity to the course. We find that, in the absence of summative assessment, short, frequent quizzes with immediate feedback are an excellent tool to track the learning of a class as a whole. Students report that the quizzes, albeit challenging, improved their understanding of programming concepts, made them aware of potential mistakes, and were a fun learning experience. Furthermore, the results from this paper illustrate how a new programming language can be taught to students without prior programming skills in a short period of time. We summarise our lessons learnt for designing and integrating quizzes in short-format programming courses.

Providing necessary knowledge and skills for engineering students to become successful professionals is a tricky task. Besides disciplinary knowledge, e.g., communication skills, ability to work in teams, and international experience are often mentioned as important. Regarding internationalization, most engineering programs in Sweden rely on either student exchange or low-level internationalization-at-home, such as international literature and lecturers. This paper explores sustainable international experiences for students on their home turf provided through an international interdisciplinary collaboration where engineering students in Sweden and marketing students in Australia work together on a project. The setup simulates a consultancy firm with development and marketing offices in different countries that cooperate to launch an application for the Australian market. The paper is based on interviews and surveys with students and teachers participating in this, since 2017, ongoing project. Findings reveal that students encountered several challenges that are hard to simulate in an ordinary university setting, e.g., language barriers, cultural differences, time differences, differences between disciplines, and varying work habits and values. The results also highlight opportunities such as learning from each other's perspectives and expertise, developing a more professional approach, presenting to people from other industry backgrounds, and gaining a better understanding of different cultures. The results show that the students gain professional experience that is of great value for their future profession. From a teacher's perspective, the paper discusses important issues when setting up an international inter-disciplinary collaboration, e.g., alignment of exercises, building a common ground, and the need for flexibility.

Programming has gradually become an essential skill for engineers and scientists across disciplines and is an important part of the CDIO Syllabus covering fundamental knowledge and reasoning. Recently, there has been a shift away from introductory programming languages like C and Java towards Python, especially in programs where the focus lies on handling and analysing large quantities of data, such as energy technology, biotechnology, and bioinformatics. This paper illustrates the successful setup of a one-week-long introductory Python programming course with a hands-on approach. Given the limited time, a challenge is how to effectively teach students a meaningful set of skills that enables them to self-guide their future learning. Moreover, since the course does not include any summative assessment, we need other means of measuring students’ learning and guiding course development. We address these challenges by coupling short lectures with short quizzes for formative assessment, adding another learning activity to the course. We find that, in the absence of summative assessment, short, frequent quizzes with immediate feedback are an excellent tool to track the learning of a class as a whole. Students report that the quizzes, albeit challenging, improved their understanding of programming concepts, made them aware of potential mistakes, and were a fun learning experience. Furthermore, the results from this paper illustrate how a new programming language can be taught to students without prior programming skills in a short period of time. We summarise our lessons learnt for designing and integrating quizzes in short-format programming courses.

Higher education should provide learning situations that prepare students for a future profession and make them world-ready. This paper reports insights from an international interdisciplinary collaborative project aiming to create learning experiences that are close to a professional situation. The collaboration setup simulates a setting of a digital agency with a development team in Sweden and a marketing team in Australia working together to solve a task. The collaborative project has been active since 2017, completing its fifth iteration in 2021. Postcourse survey results show that the students felt that a real situation was created with a high level of collaboration and commitment, internationalization, well selected digital collaborative tools, and that an interdisciplinary community of practice was created among the students.

In today’s global society, international experience isimportant for students studying all subjects. This paper providesinsights and learnings from a long-term project with the purposeto provide international interdisciplinary experience forengineering students in Sweden as well as for marketing studentsin Australia. The paper discusses the design of the latest iterationof a long-term collaborative project that enables students who donot have the opportunity to engage in exchange studies in aprofessional international setting. The main objective of this paperis to give inspiration and a starting point to the implementation ofinternational learning experiences as an integrated part ofstudents’ education.

In today’s global society, international experience isimportant for students studying all subjects. This paper providesinsights and learnings from a long-term project with the purposeto provide international interdisciplinary experience forengineering students in Sweden as well as for marketing studentsin Australia. The paper discusses the design of the latest iterationof a long-term collaborative project that enables students who donot have the opportunity to engage in exchange studies in aprofessional international setting. The main objective of this paperis to give inspiration and a starting point to the implementation ofinternational learning experiences as an integrated part ofstudents’ education.

In today’s global society, international experience isimportant for students studying all subjects. This paper providesinsights and learnings from a long-term project with the purposeto provide international interdisciplinary experience forengineering students in Sweden as well as for marketing studentsin Australia. The paper discusses the design of the latest iterationof a long-term collaborative project that enables students who donot have the opportunity to engage in exchange studies in aprofessional international setting. The main objective of this paperis to give inspiration and a starting point to the implementation ofinternational learning experiences as an integrated part ofstudents’ education.

In today’s global society, international experience isimportant for students studying all subjects. This paper providesinsights and learnings from a long-term project with the purposeto provide international interdisciplinary experience forengineering students in Sweden as well as for marketing studentsin Australia. The paper discusses the design of the latest iterationof a long-term collaborative project that enables students who donot have the opportunity to engage in exchange studies in aprofessional international setting. The main objective of this paperis to give inspiration and a starting point to the implementation ofinternational learning experiences as an integrated part ofstudents’ education.

In today’s global society, international experience isimportant for students studying all subjects. This paper providesinsights and learnings from a long-term project with the purposeto provide international interdisciplinary experience forengineering students in Sweden as well as for marketing studentsin Australia. The paper discusses the design of the latest iterationof a long-term collaborative project that enables students who donot have the opportunity to engage in exchange studies in aprofessional international setting. The main objective of this paperis to give inspiration and a starting point to the implementation ofinternational learning experiences as an integrated part ofstudents’ education.

Within engineering education, there is an increasing need for providing our students withinternational experiences. This is most often done by exchange studies abroad. However, amajority of the students on engineering programs do not engage in any international exchange.This paper presents insights from a collaborative cross-disciplinary international project to givestudents international experience without having to travel. From both a sustainabilityperspective and a situation where e.g. a global virus outbreak stop students from travelling,solutions that give engineering students experience of working in an international setting arebecoming increasingly important. Initial challenges, for the teachers involved in the project,that were addressed before the project started, included the assessment of students, the useof online collaborative tools, assessment of students and the dependence between the twocourses. The learnings from the first and second iteration of the collaborative project weremainly focused around transparency, introduction of students to each other, communication,real-time issues and deadlines. By gradually remove these peripheral challenges for thestudents, resulting in making the students focus on the actual challenges surrounding theactual collaborative project. Even though this project is ongoing, the initial results clearly showthat by integrating courses between different countries and disciplines, it is possible to createan environment that strengthens the students’ ability in teamwork, communication andaddresses the cultural and professional aspects of working as an engineer in an internationalcontext.