Intercultural competence in global collaboration courses in computer engineering.

With the rapid and ever expanding globalization of the workforce, international collaborations are becoming part of everyday life for people of many professions. Intercultural competence has therefore become one of the central professional competencies needed for students in higher education, in order to equip them for their individual careers as well as contribute to a prospering society as a whole. We will start by discussing some definitions of intercultural competence and then describe two annual international collaboration projects between students from the US, Sweden and Turkey. We will present how intercultural competence is addressed through the introduction of an external lecturer and the use of reflections and discuss the outcomes of this approach in relation to the definition of intercultural competence