Teaching Teamwork: Electronics Instruction in a Collaborative Environment

这个由协和联盟和潮水社区学院开展的高级技术教育项目将帮助教授电子专业的学生如何在团队中有效地进行面对面和远程在线工作。在线合作的能力对于跨越大陆和海洋的21世纪工作场所来说是独一无二的。雇主一再表示，合作和沟通是STEM劳动力新人至关重要的技能，然而，除了个人考试能力外，学校和大学仍然难以评估学生的工作。该项目正在解决现代STEM工作场所中团队合作的价值，特别是在线团队合作的价值与教会学生在进行个人评估的同时进行合作的困难之间的严重不匹配。在长期失业和就业不足的情况下，对训练有素的电子技术人员的需求很大，他们能够有效地在团队中工作。该项目解决了在教育环境中很难衡量劳动力中高度重视的协作技能的问题，在教育环境中，表现和分数是单独分配的。在早期NSF奖创建的模拟技术的支持下，该项目将通过收集和分析在共享在线工作空间中工作的学生团队的时间序列数据来推进该领域，这些团队的工作代表了STEM工作环境中的现实任务。该项目基于现有的软件，该软件创建了通过互联网链接在一起的电子元件和电路板的真实模拟，并用于构建和故障排除所产生的分布式电路。该项目将监控学生在一起工作时的行为，分析产生的数据，并报告每个学生以及整个团队的表现。分析的基础是使用隐马尔可夫模型来描述从计算机生成的日志和课堂观察中捕获的团队数据的顺序交互。数据包括诸如电路修改、用模拟测试设备进行的测量以及书面或口头交流等动作。作为有效协作的标志的行动模式被发现。这种方法减少了对讲师持续监督的需要，并使讲师能够认可和奖励人才、职业道德以及协作和认知技能。团队成员不需要位于同一地点，团队成员可以模仿现代工作环境中经常遇到的条件以异步方式完成工作。该项目将为参与在线协作实验室的学生提供有关评估个人和团队有效性的有效方法的信息。学习到的信息一般可应用于协作解决问题技能的教学和评估，并不局限于电子领域。预计对项目结果的评估将在其他各种领域的团队合作教学和评估中得到应用。

This Advanced Technological Education project conducted by the Concord Consortium and Tide Water Community College will help to teach students of electronics how to work effectively in teams, both face-to-face and remotely online. The ability to work together online is uniquely relevant to a 21st century workplace that spans continents and crosses oceans. Employers repeatedly cite collaboration and communication as critically important skills for new entrants to the STEM workforce, yet schools and colleges continue to have difficulty evaluating student work other than by individual test-taking ability. The project is addressing the critical mismatch between the value of teamwork, especially online teamwork, in a modern STEM workplace, and the difficulty of teaching students to collaborate while also evaluating them individually. In a time of chronic unemployment and under-employment, strong demand exists for trained electronics technicians who are able to work effectively in teams. This project addresses the problem of collaboration skills highly-valued in the workforce being difficult to measure in educational environments in which performance and grades are assigned individually.Supported by simulation technology created by an earlier NSF award, this project will advance the field by gathering and analyzing time-series data from teams of students working in a shared online workspace on realistic tasks representative of those found in the STEM work environment. The project is based on existing software that creates realistic simulations of electronic components and circuit boards that are linked together over the Internet and used to build and troubleshoot a resulting distributed circuit. The project will monitor students' actions as they work together, analyze the data produced, and report on the performance of each individual student, as well as that of the team as a whole. Analysis is based on using hidden Markov models to describe sequential interactions of the data from teams captured in both computer-generated logs and classroom observations. The data comprise actions, such as the modification of a circuit, measurements made with simulated test equipment, and written or oral communications. Patterns of actions are found that serve as markers for effective collaboration. This approach reduces the need for continuous supervision by an instructor and enables instructors to recognize and reward talent, work ethic, and collaborative and cognitive skills. Team members need not be co-located and work may be done by team members in an asynchronous fashion, mimicking conditions frequently encountered in the modern work environment.This project will yield information regarding effective methods to assess both individual and team effectiveness for students participating in online collaborative laboratories. The information learned can apply to the teaching and assessment of collaborative problem-solving skills generally and are not restricted to the field of electronics. It is anticipated that evaluation of the project results will find application in the teaching and assessing of teamwork in a variety of other domains.