Enhancing students’ skills in technical writing and LSP translation through tele-collaboration projects: Teaching students in seven nations to manage complexity in multilateral international collaboration

Partnerships involving language projects have been common, but most have paired just two nations at a time (Jarvenpaa & Leidner, 1999; Flammia, 2005, 2012; Herrington, 2005, 2008; Humbley et al., 2005; Stärke-Meyerring & Andrews, 2006; Mousten et al., 2010). That changed in 2010, when universities in five nations, long involved in the Trans-Atlantic Project (TAP) began a far more complex international learning-by-doing project (Maylath et al., 2013). By 2012, universities in two more nations were added. In forming their students into crosscultural virtual teams (CCVTs), instructors asked, how can students best learn experientially to manage complex international/interlingual technical documentation projects? During multilateral collaborations, two projects took place simultaneously: a translation-editing project and a writing-usability testing- translation project. The undertakings’ complexity was central in the students’ learning, thereby preparing students for the international, multilingual, multicultural environments in which students can be expected to operate after they graduate. Further, the projects succeeded in increasing trans-cultural and language awareness among students with little in extra funding.