Cross-cultural peer learning and amongst undergraduate civil engineers Mike Murray Dr Mike Murray, Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, University of Strathclyde Email: m.d.murray@strath.ac.uk

Learn! People Make Glasgow

An International Society

We’re a’ Jock Tamson's Bairns

Coding & Thematic Analysis Enjoyable / Interesting Fun Friends Unexpected Learning Research Graphics / Drawing /Sketching / Art / Creative Posters New Knowledge (Technological) New Knowledge (Cultural) Peers / Group-Team Collaboration International Buddy /Mentor Visit / Travel/ International Perspective Recommend Improvements Problems

Poster Display After viewing all of the posters by other groups as well, it has given me a desire to go travelling see as many different countries as I can and learn about the culture within these countries. I would also like to visit a lot of the structures that were on the posters as they are magnificent examples of Civil engineering across the world.  

International buddy/ mentor   To be able to educate and promote my home country from an engineering perspective was something I really appreciated. Our international mentor, Sabrina, who is from Luxembourg, was a member of our group already and I feel this allowed us to gain a greater understanding of the many differences between Luxembourg and Scotland. I found it rather humbling working with Sabrina as not only does she study Civil Engineering abroad, but also speaks 4 languages!  

New Knowledge (Cultural) I found this assignment extremely enjoyable and helped me learn a lot about the Scottish culture and history. I was surprised when my fellow Scottish civil engineering students were showing so much interest when I was talking about my country. They particularly were very interested in the history of Bulgaria and its political changes.

Friendships Overall - despite my understandable scepticism at the beginning – I thoroughly enjoyed this piece of coursework. It has promoted social integration between many different nationalities, and brought many people together who may now call each other friends.

Peers / Group-Team Collaboration The best part about the task in my opinion was that we got to work in groups and I feel like the group work side of the task was very useful as we all got to work on a separate project in the international country and then when we had finished we all would get together and discuss them, this not only helped us learn about one project but also another’s as we learned from our peers.

Visit / Travel/ International Perspective A lot of the stuff I learned about Spain from Irene sparked a curiosity, which I am keen to follow, in international engineering projects and possibly working, or even studying abroad later in my career. This would open so many more opportunities and allow me to explore many new and exciting aspects of civil engineering and other cultures.

Recommend I really hope this is a coursework that will still continue to be given to students in coming years to help them integrate themselves better in this country. As a foreigner I really appreciate the fact that the University of Strathclyde is helping people like me meet more people and feel at home even so far away from their actual homes.

Problems For this coursework I really struggled finding information about infrastructure. Our international mentor had to help our group out a lot. Quickly it became apparent that there is little modern infrastructure in Syria. Due to the ongoing war lots of landmarks within Syria have been destroyed, so another task was trying to find out whether the project we were looking at was still even standing.

Building Bridges!