Undergraduate group projects: Challenges and learning experiences

Abstract

Working in groups and managing projects are important professional skills for engineers, and there is a growing demand to teach and assess such skills. But what should be taught and when? Tuckman's famous "stages of development of performing groups" provides a framework for understanding the types of challenges which groups face. Yet, as with any abstract model, it will not be transferred into students' practice if they do not see it as relevant to their lived experiences.In 2014, a new course exploring the nexus of social and engineering issues in relation to the global challenges facing humanity was added to the obligatory program for all first year engineering students. Among the many noble goals of this course, in addition to gaining a more nuanced view of the global challenges from both an engineering and social science perspective, are the development of transversal skills such as team work, communication, presentation, library research and ethical engagement.The taught material about team work was presented online, allowing for the use learning analytics on students' online responses to assess how well the "stages of group formation" literature matched students' experiences. It also allowed us to consider how students' perceptions of the challenges they will face differed from challenges they actually did face, as well as the implications of this for how they should be taught about group processes.

Which professional skills do students learn in engineering team-based projects?

“…Among the most commonly reported topics are communication (49), organisation and coordination (46), time management (41) and task distribution (41). Although less frequent (29), team up challenges are also reported, inline with existing literature on difficulties of students in team projects (Isaac and Tormey, 2015). With communication topics being reported first, the survey data are consistent with the significant increase and medium effect size found with the IPMQ on the communication factor.…”

“…Because group work has the potential to lead to challenging experiences and outcomes for students (e.g. Isaac and Tormey, 2015), the explicit steps taken by instructors have been shown to be essential to assure learning. Reflection and self-assessment were shown to be effective techniques.…”

Educating Engineering Students to Address Bias and Discrimination Within Their Project Teams

“…Indeed, these skills are expressly required by many engineering accreditation agencies (ABET, 2013;ENAEE, 2021). Educational researchers, faculty, and employers concur that team projects in engineering are a key way to develop these skills in undergraduate students (Paretti et al, 2014;Borrego et al, 2013;Isaac & Tormey, 2015;Crawley et al, 2014).…”

“…For example, Kelly Cross and Marie found that personal interactions directly influenced how black students experienced their student teams in engineering and Prisca Aeby et al (2019) found that gender influenced expectations and task assignments in student engineering teams. While the difficulties underrepresented groups encounter in engineering student teams have been identified (Cech & Rothwell, 2018;Dee & Gershenson, 2017), there is less work investigating how conflict, bias, and inequality are managed by student teams (Aeby et al, 2019;Isaac & Tormey, 2015;Miranda et al, 2019;Strachan et al, 2018;Wolfe et al, 2016).…”

Engaging large classes of higher education students: a combination of spaced learning and team-based learning

“…This is a common problem in every working group, not only at the university level but also professionally (Isaac and Tormey, 2015). Group work is usually not an immediately rewarding experience for students (Colbeck et al, 2015).…”