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With global specialization of work units within organizations, interdisciplinary work practices comprised of collaborative efforts between technical and business teams are increasingly common in today's workplace. While higher education has responded by creating opportunities for remote teams to learn from collaborative work, occasions for interaction between remotely situated significantly diverse teams such as business and engineering are few. This study describes a pedagogical offering between U.S.-based business teams and U.K.-based engineering teams that delivers such an experience around mutually dependent, socially responsible projects. Results from student surveys and reflections confirm that the pedagogical design is able to generate perceived interdependence between these diverse teams. Student responses to surveys also suggest that the collaboration is effective in raising student confidence in interdisciplinary and remote team work among students. The study concludes with recommendations for transferability and actualization of interdisciplinary collaboration.

This paper delineates workplace and work based learning before going on to discuss in detail the application of workplace learning, based on experience gained from a number of case studies. The rationale, operational aspects and quality assurance requirements are described, before attention is turned to delivery methods, project management and financial considerations. The paper identifies the problems and opportunities associated with adopting this form of academic delivery for an existing university programme, and provides suggestions for likely future development.