Collaborative Research: Building Supports for Diversity through Engineering Teams

培养能够在跨文化团队中有效工作的学生是工程教育的重要组成部分。在我们日益全球化的经济中，学生必须做好充分的准备，以满足工程劳动力的需求。然而，许多学生在上大学之前没有国际视野，也没有与来自各种背景的人互动的经验。因此，了解如何改善文化多样性群体内的团队互动，可以为学生提供新的机会，更深入地了解工程团队的差异，同时加深他们对工程概念的理解。该项目的重点是学生如何参与不同的工程团队在第一年的课程，以及他们的参与如何影响学生的多元文化的有效性和多样性的敏感性。多元文化的有效性和多样性的敏感性已被证明有助于实现一个共同的群体身份，这是有效的团队必不可少的。该项目的动机是在工程教育界的两个更广泛的目标，并促进ABET这是互补的：1）研究生与多学科团队的功能和2）给学生必要的广泛的教育，以了解工程解决方案的全球影响。了解学生从事工程设计的经验和由此产生的态度转变将有助于确定切实可行的方法，以提高学生对来自不同背景的人的理解和欣赏。这些干预措施可能会改变这些机构的工程文化，使其更包容代表性不足的学生。该项目由工程教育研究计划和EHR核心研究（ECR）计划支持，特别是特别感兴趣的残疾人教育领域的ECR研究。ECR强调基础STEM教育研究，产生该领域的基础知识。 该研究项目有助于扩大参与STEM的基础知识。这种顺序解释混合方法的研究将解决差距，在目前的文献，了解学生如何在不同的团队互动。 学生人口统计数据将包括种族，民族，性别，残疾和其他信息，作为数据分析和解释结果的变量。第一阶段的研究将定量测量多样化的团队形成的多样性敏感性和多元文化的有效性的影响。学生态度的基线调查将在第一年工程课开始时收集，然后将学生分组。学生将通过团队成员有效性综合评估（CATME）分组为不同的团队，并在学期中期和期末进行调查，以跟踪基于团队组成的多样性敏感性和多元文化有效性的变化，使用时间序列结构方程模型。 此外，社会网络分析将用于了解学生如何在工程任务分配的团队内部和外部工作，以确定工程中的跨界人员。最后，将在工程任务期间收集团队交互的多个数据流（音频记录、视频记录、观察和工作产品）。研究的第二阶段将对学生进行解释性现象学访谈，以了解学生在不同团队中的工作经历。参加面试的学生还将被要求完成内隐联想测试，以引出组内偏好。使用解释性现象学访谈可以通过分析学生的生活经历来创造理解，同时仍然允许研究人员利用现有文献的理解。这种定性方法使我们能够成功地将解释性结果转移到这项工作的范围之外，以推进围绕工程中不同团队的对话。通过结合在这项工作中概述的方法，我们可以确定社区成员谁是“外组”成员由他们的同龄人和经验了解个人的做法，推动创建外组和这些学生的经验，在工程团队环境。这项工作的结果可以对学生如何在工程团队中分组和教学产生重大影响，这可以改善学生的体验，使工程更具包容性，团队合作技能更有效。

Developing students who can work effectively in cross-cultural teams is an important part of engineering education. In our increasingly global economy, students must be adequately prepared to meet the demands of the engineering workforce. However, many students do not have international exposure prior to college or the experience of interacting with others from a variety of backgrounds. As such, understanding how to improve team interactions within culturally diverse groups can provide novel opportunities for students to more deeply appreciate differences in engineering teams while simultaneously deepening their understanding of engineering concepts. This project is focused on how students participate in diverse engineering teams in first-year courses and how their participation impacts students' multicultural effectiveness and diversity sensitivity. Multicultural effectiveness and diversity sensitivity have been shown to help achieve a common group identity that is essential to effective teams. This project is motivated by two broader goals in the engineering education community and promoted by ABET which are complementary: 1) to graduate students with an ability to function on multidisciplinary teams and 2) to give students the broad education necessary to understand the impact of engineering solutions globally. Understanding the experiences of students engaging in engineering design and the resulting shifts in attitudes will help identify practical ways to increase students' understanding and appreciation of people from diverse backgrounds. These interventions may change the culture of engineering at these institutions to make it more inclusive of underrepresented students. This project is supported by the Research in Engineering Education program and the EHR Core Research (ECR) program, specifically the ECR Research in Disabilities Education area of special interest. ECR emphasizes fundamental STEM education research that generates foundational knowledge in the field. This research project contributes to foundational knowledge about broadening participation in STEM. This sequential explanatory mixed methods study will address the gap in the current literature to understand how students interact in diverse teams. Student demographic data will include race, ethnicity, gender, disability and other information to be used as variables in the data analyses and interpretations of the findings. The first phase of research will quantitatively measure effects of diverse team formation on diversity sensitivity and multicultural effectiveness. A baseline survey of student attitudes will be collected at the beginning of their first-year engineering class before students are grouped into teams. Students will be grouped into diverse teams via the Comprehensive Assessment for Team Member Effectiveness (CATME) and surveyed mid- and end-semester to track changes in diversity sensitivity and multicultural effectiveness based on team composition using time series structural equation modeling. Additionally, social network analysis will be used to understand how students work within and outside of their assigned teams on engineering tasks to identify boundary crossing individuals within engineering. Finally, multiple streams of data will be collected on team interactions during engineering tasks (audio recording, video recording, observation, and work products). The second phase of research will conduct interpretative phenomenological interviews with students to understand students' experiences working in diverse teams. Students participating in interviews will also be asked to complete Implicit Association Tests to elicit in-group preferences. The use of interpretative phenomenological interviews allows for the creation of understanding through the analysis of students' lived experiences while still allowing the researcher to leverage understanding from existing literature. This qualitative methodology allows us to successfully transfer interpretive results beyond the bounds of this work to advance the conversations around diverse teaming in engineering. By combining the methodologies outlined in this work we can identify members of the community who are made "out-group" members by their peers and empirically understand the practices of individuals that drive the creation of out-groups and these students' experiences in engineering teaming environments. The findings of this work can have significant impact in how students are grouped and taught within engineering teams, which can improve students' experiences to make engineering more inclusive and teaming skills more effective.