Renate Fruchter
Director of Project Based Learning Laboratory (PBL Lab), Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-4020, USA
E-mail: fruchter@ce.stanford.edu

Alicia Townsend
Graduate Students Learning Design and Technology Program, School Education, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA

Abstract:
This paper presents an ongoing study focused on the relationship between culture and multi-modal communication in the context of a cross-disciplinary geographically distributed teamwork course organized by the PBL Lab at Stanford. The study focuses on cultural dimensions that characterize distributed Architecture, Engineering, Construction (A/E/C) global teamwork, i.e., language, information flow, context, power distance, and time value. The paper presents a framework and methodology for data collection and analysis of multi-cultural dimensions and initial observations made during the first phase of this study.