Handling diversity in group work in the information systems class

Abstract

Tertiary institutions in South Africa are faced with dealing with diversity in all its forms in our classrooms. Information Systems, Information Technology and Computer Science students need to learn to work with people who are different from themselves in order to learn to work effectively in the work environment to which they will go. Teaching students in a multicultural classroom to be able to practise their profession in multicultural settings is crucial. This paper looks at the problems that occur if we ignore diversity, some techniques for dealing with diversity, especially when using group work and then presents results of a series of four case studies where some of these techniques were applied.