Nowadays, modern enterprises involve more and more graduated engineers in projects in which several persons from different origins, cultures and countries have to collaborate conjointly. In this vein, young professionals often underestimate the additional challenges and requirements tying in with this form of work.
NEREID is an acronym for Network of Engineering univeRsities Educating in Intercultural Design. It is a cooperation between 5 different universities, based in 4 different countries, which bring together students by means of small software engineering projects.
In the Greek mythology, the Nereids are fifty nymphs who dwell in the Mediterranean Sea. These beautiful women were always friendly and helpful towards sailors/navigators fighting perilous storms. Belonging to the retinue of Poseidon, they are believed to be able to prophesize.
Enable students to collaborate in multi-cultural teams by working conjointly on a software engineering task
Participants who take part in this practical course will cooperate with other students from international universities by commonly working on a software engineering project during a period of approximately 2 months. In this context, international groups of 3-5 students are formed. Besides solving a task in the domain of software engineering, each student team has to leverage the project management methodologies in order to achieve the stated objectives.
The complementary presentation and report sum up essential concepts and results of their work. As means of communication, the professional video conference systems hosted at the universities as well as personal computer and mobile software (e.g. Skype, Windows Messenger, netviewer, etc.) are used. The course lasts in the first half of the semester, starting at the beginning of the lecture period in October 2009 and finishing at mid of January 2010.
Each student team uses Tricia (Open Source Web Collaboration and Knowledge Management Software) as their main collaboration tool. The software provides wiki, messsaging, blog and file transfer functionalities allowing an easy and efficient cooperation among the team members.
The official project organization website can be found here. Note, that access is restricted to the project staff.
In case you require help how to work with Tricia please consider the videos in our Tricia Documentation Wiki.
Tricia - Printout
