1.1 Background

Due to the increasing global and local diversity combined with the enormous development in electronic communication and collaboration media, the opportunities as well as the need to work in virtual intercultural teams is constantly increasing. In these shared virtual places meaningful intercultural experiences can occur and effective learning and working can take place if we are ready to meet the challenges which may come along with virtuality and interculturality. In order to do so, we have created the online course "Virtual intercultural teams" ViTeams, along with this trainer's manual.

The main goal of this course is to identify and analyse challenges in virtual intercultural contexts and develop professional as well as social competencies to support and enable a high level of performance and work satisfaction. In a nutshell, the objective of this course is to enhance virtual and intercultural competencies so that participants can work successfully in diverse virtual intercultural team settings.

This trainer's manual is designed to enable instructors to support the learning process of people participating in the online course. It introduces principles for teaching and learning in diverse virtual settings and provides training materials for customisation based on participants’ needs and backgrounds.

The material included can be used

• to deepen participants’ knowledge of selected topics;
• to provide learning activities that can be employed;
• to specifically target participants working for Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs), small and medium sized companies (SMEs) and students who are embarking on a course in intercultural communication.

Our goal is thus to help trainer’s support participants in their learning and enhancing their personal growth.