Testing the Effectiveness of a Digital Tool, Tandem, in Assessing and Supporting Inclusive and Equitable Teamwork in Engineering

该项目旨在通过改进如何评估和支持工程入门课程中的团队合作，特别关注公平和包容，从而为国家利益服务。学习如何在团队中有效地工作显然是准备工科本科生的一个重要目标。然而，支持包容性团队合作仍然具有挑战性。在团队中被边缘化与学生的社会身份有关，比如认同自己是女性或有色人种。它可以有多种形式，包括被忽视的想法或被推到更卑微的任务中。特别是在入门课程和大型学院和大学中，工程教师面临着有许多学生和学生团队的额外障碍。由于这些复杂的因素，教师，甚至学生自己，都很难实时意识到他们的团队中发生了不公平的行为，并知道如何解决它们。不公平的团队的后果是严重的，导致掌握经验的不平等，最终导致学生离开工程学位课程。为了解决这个问题，该项目引入了一种名为Tandem的数字教学工具。Tandem有望打破不公平的团队行为。Tandem由密歇根大学（University of Michigan）开发，是一个面向课程团队的多面工具，为学生提供有关有效团队合作的量身定制课程。该工具向学生和教师提供关于团队工作情况的反馈。该项目的目的是研究Tandem在评估和支持工程中包容和公平的团队合作方面的有效性。该项目旨在提高参与工程的学生的多样性，并改进新颖的教育工具。此外，该项目将解决国家研究委员会基于学科的教育研究报告中概述的研究议程的两个组成部分。这包括开展以下研究：1)试图了解不同学生群体之间的异同，例如性别和种族/民族；2)通过关注与学习的情感维度相关的结果，超越了评估概念理解方面的收益。使用混合方法研究设计，本项目将通过以下研究问题来解决总体目标：1)在哪些方面可以使用Tandem来观察工程中包容和公平的团队合作？2)如何使用Tandem来支持更包容和公平的工程团队合作？虽然Tandem目前在密歇根大学的一系列课程中使用，但该项目的范围将仅限于工程100，这是第一年的基础工程设计课程。工程100是一个有用的背景，部分原因是学生在大学课程早期团队合作经验的微小差异可能会在随后的团队项目经验中被放大，因为大学一年级和二年级被认为是在保留和坚持STEM专业方面最具影响力的。主要数据来源包括学生调查和对Tandem整个学期收集的课程的回应，学生访谈以及在课堂上对工程学生团队的观察。这项工作的预期成果包括：1)关于衡量团队合作能力的方法的概括性知识，强调包容和公平，并培养教师和学生对不公平团队行为的认识；2)改进Tandem的调查和课程特征，以支持团队包容行为的能力；3)改进工程课程背景下的教学实践。该项目的积极影响将通过在密歇根大学和其他机构的其他团队课程中使用Tandem进一步传播。该项目具有变革性的潜力，Tandem可以为教师和学生提供量身定制的支持，以识别和解决团队中的不公平行为，并促进所有人都能成功的条件。NSF IUSE: EHR计划支持研究和开发项目，以提高所有学生STEM教育的有效性。通过参与学生学习轨道，该计划支持有前途的实践和工具的创建，探索和实施。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This project aims to serve the national interest by improving how teamwork in introductory engineering courses is assessed and supported, with specific focus on equity and inclusion. Learning how to work effectively in a team is clearly an important goal for preparing undergraduate engineering students. However, supporting inclusive teamwork remains challenging. Marginalization on teams has been linked to aspects of students’ social identity, such as identifying as a woman or person of color. It can take a variety of forms, including ideas going unheard or being pushed into more menial tasks. Particularly in introductory courses and at large colleges and universities, engineering instructors face the additional hurdle of having many students and student teams. With these compounding factors, it is difficult for instructors, and even students themselves, to be aware in real-time when inequitable behaviors are occurring on their teams, and to know how to address them. The consequences of inequitable teams are serious, leading to inequities in mastery experiences and ultimately contributing to students leaving engineering degree programs. To address this problem, this project introduces a digital pedagogical tool, called Tandem. Tandem holds promise for disrupting inequitable team behaviors. Developed at the University of Michigan, Tandem is a multi-faceted tool for course teams that delivers tailored lessons to students about effective teamwork. The tool provides feedback to students and instructors about how teams are doing. The objective of this project is to study the effectiveness of Tandem in assessing and supporting inclusive and equitable teamwork in engineering. This project seeks to improve the diversity of students that participate in engineering as well as improve novel educational tools. Further, the project will address two components of the research agenda outlined in the National Research Council’s discipline-based education research report. This includes conducting research that: 1) seeks to understand similarities and differences between student groups that differ by, for example, gender and race/ethnicity; and 2) goes beyond assessing gains in conceptual understanding by focusing on outcomes associated with affective dimensions of learning. Using mixed method study designs, this project will address the overall objective through the following research questions: 1) In what ways can Tandem be used to observe inclusive and equitable teamwork in engineering? And 2) In what ways can Tandem be used to support more inclusive and equitable teamwork in engineering? While Tandem is currently being used across a range of courses at the University of Michigan, the scope of the project will be limited to Engineering 100, the cornerstone first-year engineering design course. Engineering 100 is a useful context in part because small differences in teamwork experiences early in a student’s college coursework can be magnified in subsequent team project experiences and because the first and second years in college are considered the most impactful in terms of retention and persistence of STEM majors. Key data sources include data from student surveys and responses to lessons collected throughout the term in Tandem, student interviews, and observations of engineering student teams during class meetings. The expected outcomes from this work include 1) generalizable knowledge about an approach to measuring teamwork competency that emphasizes inclusion and equity and fosters instructor and student awareness of inequitable team behavior, 2) improvements to survey and lesson features within Tandem that will support the ability of teams to behave inclusively, and 3) improved pedagogical practice in this engineering course context. The positive impacts of this project will be further propagated through the use of Tandem in other team-based courses at the University of Michigan as well as at other institutions. This project has transformative potential in the tailored support that Tandem can provide to instructors and students in recognizing and addressing inequitable behavior in teams and promoting conditions in which all can be successful. 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.