Collaborative Research: Enhancing Design Teamwork Experiences and Learning in Engineering Education

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This project aims to serve the national interest in improving engineering education. Specifically, it intends to improve team formation and collaboration and thus enhance engineering students’ learning experiences in a team. Teamwork is an essential component of all engineering undergraduate programs and is a critical skill for professional engineering practice. For many engineering students, unsatisfactory experiences on a student team can generate long-term negative feelings about teamwork, which can negatively affect their performance in the engineering workplace. Formation of effective student teams by engineering instructors is a critical first step in ensuring that team-based projects, labs, and design courses are successfully completed. Team composition directly affects team deliberations, procedures, and learning outcomes. In this project, Northern Illinois University and Rochester Institute of Technology plan to extend knowledge about optimal student team-formation. This work will include creation of a conceptual model for team formation, recognition of the characteristics of an ideal team, and identification of gaps between the actual and the ideal teams.Project activities include: (i) the creation of a conceptual model that relates team inputs, team processes, and team outputs; (ii) use of the conceptual model to identify ideal team characteristics and establish a team-formation methodology; and iii) investigation of the hypothesis that improved team member collaboration enhances both team performance and learning. The approach taken is novel, evidence-based, and data-driven. The project’s planned “regression” approach to team formation uses data obtained directly from students deployed to work in teams for two years in normal classroom settings. Comprehensive data will be collected using variables that describe team inputs, processes, and outputs. A regression model will then be constructed in the third year to correlate input variables to desired outputs. Associations in the conceptual model will be tested through investigation of multiple hypotheses using validated instruments and appropriate statistical techniques. The NSF IUSE: EHR Program supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. Through the Engaged Student Learning track, the program supports the creation, exploration, and implementation of promising practices and tools.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.