Engineering performance and teamwork perceptions shaped by structured learning experiences in a makerspace.

The ability to work on teams is of critical importance to the field of engineering and a critical competency for future engineers. Fostering performance of effective teamwork through the education of engineers emphasizes the humanistic dimension of the engineering profession and engages future engineering professionals in complex and dynamic team experiences. Team performance and effectiveness of student teams is strongly influenced by individual student perceptions of teamwork as a learning mechanism for successful collective learning experiences. Initial perceptions of teamwork among first year engineering students are often negative due to prior adverse or unproductive team performance. Makerspace learning environments are becoming more prominent in engineering education as promising environments for open-ended, team-based learning experiences that promote positive perceptions of teamwork and performance. The educational potential that makerspaces have to promote engineering design-thinking among the community of teams has great appeal among engineering education. This study explored the engineering performance and student teamwork perceptions of a cohort of first year engineering students (N=488, 126 teams) engaged in a team-based learning experience within a makerspace learning environment. The mixed methods convergent case study design examined teams within and across cases to extract systematic patterns within and across the three constructs of this study: 1) team effectiveness, 2) engineering practice, and 3) teamwork perceptions. Using a 3-phase analysis approach teams were found to be effective in their ability to perform and a relationship emerged between the effectiveness of a team and the team’s collective efficacy. Student perceptions were found to shift over time and through experience. The team-based learning experience implemented through the course was valuable to improving student perceptions of teamwork by 1) ensuring multidisciplinary teams, 2) gradually releasing teams to perform complex, ill-structured problem solving, and 3) using the resources and space within the makerspace to encourage teams to creatively solve the design problem. More research is needed to investigate the inner dynamics of the teams, particularly how well makerspace learning environments engage diverse individuals and what differences exist among experiences

DIDET: Digital libraries for distributed, innovative design education and teamwork. Final project report

The central goal of the DIDET Project was to enhance student learning opportunities by enabling them to partake in global, team based design engineering projects, in which they directly experience different cultural contexts and access a variety of digital information sources via a range of appropriate technology. To achieve this overall project goal, the project delivered on the following objectives: 1. Teach engineering information retrieval, manipulation, and archiving skills to students studying on engineering degree programs. 2. Measure the use of those skills in design projects in all years of an undergraduate degree program. 3. Measure the learning performance in engineering design courses affected by the provision of access to information that would have been otherwise difficult to access. 4. Measure student learning performance in different cultural contexts that influence the use of alternative sources of information and varying forms of Information and Communications Technology. 5. Develop and provide workshops for staff development. 6. Use the measurement results to annually redesign course content and the digital libraries technology. The overall DIDET Project approach was to develop, implement, use and evaluate a testbed to improve the teaching and learning of students partaking in global team based design projects. The use of digital libraries and virtual design studios was used to fundamentally change the way design engineering is taught at the collaborating institutions. This was done by implementing a digital library at the partner institutions to improve learning in the field of Design Engineering and by developing a Global Team Design Project run as part of assessed classes at Strathclyde, Stanford and Olin. Evaluation was carried out on an ongoing basis and fed back into project development, both on the class teaching model and the LauLima system developed at Strathclyde to support teaching and learning. Major findings include the requirement to overcome technological, pedagogical and cultural issues for successful elearning implementations. A need for strong leadership has been identified, particularly to exploit the benefits of cross-discipline team working. One major project output still being developed is a DIDET Project Framework for Distributed Innovative Design, Education and Teamwork to encapsulate all project findings and outputs. The project achieved its goal of embedding major change to the teaching of Design Engineering and Strathclyde's new Global Design class has been both successful and popular with students

Interdisciplinary project types in engineering education

Problem- and project-based learning (PBL) is often highlighted as a valuable approach for addressing the need for interdisciplinarity in engineering education. However, studies indicate that applied projects in engineering education tend to be limited to a single discipline. This article presents a new project typology which can be applied in engineering education. The typology is based on an action research study in a systemic PBL environment. The model presented has two dimensions: a) the complexity of teams, ranging from single team to networks of teams, and b) the complexity of interdisciplinarity, ranging from disciplinary projects to broad interdisciplinary projects. This results in the identification of six different project types. This typology can be used as a conceptual framework for interdisciplinary learning throughout engineering education. The project types embrace both single-team projects and larger projects consisting of multiple teams working together on complex problems

Meeting the growing demand for engineers and their educators: the potential for open and distance learning

As with all teaching, open and distance approaches are successful only if based on good pedagogical design addressing the purpose, structure and pace of the material, hence engaging students and encouraging active learning. For distance learning such pedagogical design is often expensive, and can only be justified by comparatively large student numbers. Much open and distance teaching offers meagre student support. To be successful, course developers must integrate student support into the learning materials, including such elements as a modest number of face-to-face sessions or electronic communication at a distance. This presentation discusses these issues in the context of SET distance teaching and presents examples of good practice from the UKOU, including: • an introductory course in ICT that adopts an issues-based approach, in order to de-mystify the subject and make it more attractive to students • resource-based approaches in engineering education • team projects at a distance • an emphasis on ‘active learning’ An argument is also to be made for the importance of openness if we really wish to promote engineering. In this context ‘openness’ means making programmes available to all students (even those without formal school-leaving qualifications) that will ultimately enable them to qualify as a professional engineer or an educator of engineers. The traditional approach to engineering education has been hierarchical and linear: a good school leaving certificate in mathematics / science followed by an often very theoretical university education plus an application-oriented final project. If we are serious about attracting new engineers, this will no longer do. An open and distance approach to engineering formation, based on outcomes rather than input educational levels, and with an emphasis on lifelong learning and professional development, can make a major contribution to chang

A Phenomenological Investigation of the Experiences of Engineering Upperclassmen in a Team Facilitator Training Program

The purpose of this study is to describe the experiences of engineering upperclassmen in an engineering design team facilitator training program. Sixteen male and five female engineering students from a large southern university participated in 25 to 45 minute phenomenological interviews in which they were asked to talk about their experiences in a facilitator training program. The students ranged in age from 19 to 22. Each student was asked to respond to the following statement, “What has been your experience of participating in the facilitator training program?” Interviews were audiotaped and transcribed. The transcripts were analyzed individually and in a group format using an existential/phenomenological method. Data analysis revealed a thematic structure comprised of five themes: Teams, Facilitation, Learning, Evaluations, and Expectations. The theme of Teams was comprised of five sub-themes: Team Composition, Team Development, Team Differences, Feelings about the Team, and Team Reaction to the Facilitator. The theme of Facilitation was comprised of four sub-themes: Personal Qualities, Defining the Facilitator Role, Understanding the Team, and Intervening. The theme of Learning was comprised of four sub-themes: What I Learned, How I Learned It, Application of the Learning Outside of Class, and Learning by the Freshman Team. The theme of Evaluations was comprised of four sub-themes: Evaluations of the Class, Evaluations of the Facilitation, Evaluations of the Team’s Functioning, and Evaluations by the Freshman Team. The theme of Expectations was comprised of the following four sub-themes: Facilitator Training v Expectations About the Freshman Team, Expectations About the Class, Expectations About Engineering Students in General, and Expectations From the Freshman Team. Relationships between the themes are explored. Research on facilitation, engineering education, and training program development is also discussed. There is also a discussion of the implications of these findings for training engineering design team facilitators, developing interdisciplinary programs, and conducting phenomenological research

Peer-Led-Team Learning in Introductory Engineering Courses: An Analysis of an Interventional Method of Support for Underrepresented Students at a Two-year, Hispanic-serving Public Institution

The three-year project entitled Engagement in Engineering Pathways funded by the National Science Foundation Improving Undergraduate STEM education grant explored the conditions that led to increased academic outcomes and non-cognitive factors related to persistence of nontraditional undergraduate students in engineering education. The study was conducted at a multicampus, federally-designated, Hispanic-serving, public, two-year college in the southeast United States. This paper presents one aspect of the effects of peer-led team learning (PLTL) on academic success through the inclusion of active learning modules in introductory undergraduate engineering course. The researchers found that PLTL introduced in engineering courses, to include statics and dynamics, closed a gap between majority and minority students, populations historically underrepresented in engineering. Although the study is limited to a single institution, the results support that the inclusion of active learning modules introduced through peer-led exercises are an important learning support construct known to be a factor in academic success and persistence in engineering education

Engineering education for sustainable development: using online learning to support the new paradigms

This paper explores the experiences of three academic members of the University of Nottingham Open Online Course (NOOC) and Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) team, comprising an engineer (tutor), an engineering education specialist (facilitator) and a specialist in higher education pedagogy (convenor). The paper explores notions of what makes for effective teaching of sustainability within a multidisciplinary online context, and the extent to which this experience has impacted upon personal behaviours and attitudes to sustainability, from an Engineering Education for Sustainable Development (EESD) perspective. Team members’ experiences are further supported by findings from student and learner evaluations of the NOOC and MOOC courses. Key findings of the research include (a) Interdisciplinarity is a strength of the course (b) The course can lead to genuine change in the understanding of sustainability; (c) Teaching sustainability online is different; (d) Involvement in the course impacts upon teaching practices; (e) Cultural and disciplinary diversity within both the course team and the student cohort is a major contributor to the overall sustainable development learning experience in the NOOC/MOOC. It is hoped that the findings of the study will pave the way for engineering and non-engineering educators to explore the potential of integrating sustainability within the modules they teach, via online teaching and learning means

Developing and improving competence profiles of project teams in engineering education

This concept paper reflects an ongoing research on designing students’ team projects in engineering education with a focus on soft skills development. The core idea is to relate project tasks with relevant team situations and team roles which require and train certain sets of soft skills. The paper proposes: a) a model for developing the relevant soft skills out of project tasks, and b) an approach to relate individual competence profiles of team members with an overall team competence profile. A core assumption is that if a team is formed, individual competences are aggregated in a certain way to form a single team competence profile. However, in the case of soft skills this aggregating is more complex than simply adding skill levels, e.g., soft skills in teams are a result of specific combinations of competences. Understanding these effects is relevant for project management and engineering education. The paper proposes a first draft of a systematic framework for investigating such effects and for making them usable for the design of student projects in engineering education. It also provides insight into an example of an agile cross-border project conducted fully online and using the scrum method. The paper is considered to be a contribution to the development of project-based learning

Enhancing Teamwork Skills Through an Interdisciplinary Engineering Service Learning Collaboration

The purpose of this research paper is to explore whether participation in an interdisciplinary collaboration program partnering Preservice Teachers (PST) and Undergraduate Engineering Students (UES) results in an increase in teamwork effectiveness. The interdisciplinary collaboration was designed as a service-learning project within existing undergraduate programs that included the development and delivery of engineering content to a K-12 audience. The collaborations were integrated into existing courses in two colleges, engineering and education. The Behaviorally Anchored Rating Scale (BARS) version of the Comprehensive Assessment of Team Member Effectiveness (CATME) was used midway and at the end of the project to evaluate teamwork effectiveness. Results of the analysis indicated that both PST and UES were rated significantly higher in team-member effectiveness at the end of the project across four of five factors: interacting with team members, keeping the team on track, expecting quality, and having relevant knowledge, skills and abilities. The gain in the teamwork effectiveness did not differ across majors, with both UES and PST showing similar gains. A noticeable positive increase in student attitudes towards the task was also observed between the midway and the end of the project. Findings from this study provide some preliminary evidence that an innovative interdisciplinary service learning experience partnering engineering and education students was conducive to the development of teamwork skills