Main idea

• We place students in international virtual teams with peers from around the world: 7 students per team, each in a different country.
• They solve real-life problems presented by real-life companies.
• In the process, they learn about other countries and cultures, learn how to collaborate online, work as a team, and solve business challenges.

What is X-Culture?

X-Culture is a very successful global phenomenon that has become an institution in International Business education.

Every semester, thousands of MBA and college students from hundreds of universities around the world take part in X-Culture. As of 2017, over 40,000 students have participated in X-Culture, and about 5,000 more are added every semester.

Following the popularity of the project with universities, we have been receiving requests to create a “kids” version of X-Culture.
Younger children are fully capable and could greatly benefit from interacting with their peers around the world.

As a beta-test, we are launching a “Kids” track (ages 8-12) and a “Teens” track (ages 13-17).

It will be exactly the same program as the university students take part in, just with a set of challenges simplified to be age appropriate for younger participants. The kids/teens will also receive some additional pre-project training to ensure they are fully prepared for the experience.

The kids and teens will also work in global virtual teams with their peers, develop their solutions to real-life problems presented by real companies, meet the company CEOs in live webinars, write and present their reports, and receive X-Culture Global Business Collaboration Certificates.

For the 2018-1 round, our clients are companies like Innospark (educational toys) and Me Late Chocolate (chocolate) to make sure the products are familiar and interesting for the younger X-Culture participants.

Benefits for Trainees

1. International experience
   Complete a project in a team where each team member is from a different country.
2. Business experience
   Solve a real business challenge for a real client company.
3. New knowledge and skills
   Training in cross-cultural communication, online collaboration tools, international business, business writing and presentation, and more.
4. Personal and professional network
   Friends around the world, contacts at many universities and several companies.
5. Cultural intelligence
   A documented significant improvement in cultural intelligence from before to after the project.
6. X-Culture Certificate and Recommendation Letter
   You learn and grow. We provide a documented proof.
7. Stronger resume and improved chances of a new start
   X-Culture experience makes you a much stronger applicant for a stipend or job. 

Benefits for Teachers

1. Enhanced student learning
   Compared to control groups (no X-Culture), students in courses with X-Culture do better on exams.
2. Improved teaching evaluations
   Compared to control groups, students who have X-Culture give their teachers higher evaluations.
3. Research and publications
   X-Culture is a great research platform that provides high-quality multi-source multi-level longitudinal data. If you are interested in scholarly work, X-Culture will provide you the necessary data.
4. Professional network
   Meet the hundreds of educators and business professionals on the X-Culture team.
5. Documented proof of your achievement:
   X-Culture Global Educator Certificate and support letters sent to your principal or department head. You do a great job; we make sure the world knows about it.
6. X-Culture certificates for your students
   Students get X-Culture International Business certificates, which help with college and job applications.
7. Help us make education more interactive and experiential
   The workplace is becoming global. Learning how to work across cultures in a classroom is like learning to swim on a football field. X-Culture is developing new teaching methods for the new today – and you can be part of our team.

How It Works

Main idea

• The students work in international teams with peers from around the world.
• They solve real-life problems presented by real-life companies.
• In the process, they learn about other countries and cultures, learn how to collaborate online and work as a team.

Step-by-step

1. Students are enrolled by their teachers (entire class) or parents (one child).
2. We provide them with age-appropriate training on online collaboration tools, teamwork, problem solving, and report writing.
3. We put them on global virtual teams.
4. Real businesses submit real business challenges and the students try to solve them.
5. We monitor student performance and send you weekly performance review on each of your students.
6. The international teams prepare their reports and present them to our partner companies.
7. The students receive X-Culture Global Collaboration Certificates.
8. The teachers receive X-Culture Global Educator Certificates.
9. The best students are invited to the X-Culture Symposium.
10. The data are used for research and publishing – and you are welcome to join as a co-author.

Program Design

Pre-Project Training (4 weeks)

A series of training modules, such as:

• The X-Culture Project: Purpose, History, Method, Vision
• Online Collaboration Tools (Skype, Doodle, Dropbox, Google Docs, WhatsApp, Slack, Trello, BaseCamp, etc.)
• Cross-cultural communication
• How to be an effective global virtual team
• Effective presentation: The art of writing business proposals
• Plagiarism and academic referencing
• The basics of International Business

Practical Training (8 weeks)

The students work in global virtual teams:

• As the students are completing the project, they experience the challenges and learn best practices of working in teams, communicating online, dealing with time-zones, cultural differences, and more
• Students have live webinars with the CEOs of their client organizations, submit weekly deliverables, receive feedback, and make friends
• The teams submit their final business proposals

Post-Project Reflections (4 weeks)

After the reports are submitted:

• Students present their work in-class and/or in a live online teleconference
• Students write reflection papers where they reflect on their experiences

Post-Project Awards and Documentation

After the project is over, the students and instructors receive:

• X-Culture International Business Certificates (students)
• X-Culture Global Educator Certificates (teachers)
• Best Team awards
• Best Teacher awards
• The best students and instructors are invited to the X-Culture Symposium