An international cross-disciplinary student collaboration: a retrospective eight years

A successful construction endeavour invariably obliges a successful collaborative effort among its many multi-disciplinary stakeholders. Teachers of construction education today are increasingly aware of the need to teach their students skills to enable them to work collaboratively with their peers from other related disciplines. In the present day context of an increasingly globalized construction industry amidst a current rapid advancement in communication technology, an ability to work collaboratively with peers across a geographical divide within an online environment is a valuable skill to have. This paper presents the collective experiences of two distant universities where students from two related disciplines – architectural science (with a construction project management major) and civil engineering - collaborate on a joint student assignment across a time and geographical divide. It presents a description of the project and its intent, teaching pedagogy, students’ feedback and the challenges of establishing the framework.