As modern STEM programmes move to focus on a more skills based curriculum, a different approach to conceptualising learning is required. Learning skills is a very different process to learning a list of technical information. In the same way that becoming fluent in a language requires more than learning a list of vocabulary. Curricula are addressing this by moving away from solely using knowledge transfer methods and including multiple experiential learning experiences. These experiential learning experiences allow students to recontextualise existing knowledge, add experience or tacit knowledge to their learning and practise professional skills such as problem solving and communication skills repeatedly

Dias, EM

Direito, I

Mitchell, J

Roach, K

Taiwo, FA

Truscott, FR

English

UCL Discovery

027137sg @mmt‘k Bnmedqdmbd+ Dmrbgdcd+ sgd Mdsgdqk‘mcr RFNPS O4ODPRWHAT ARE GOOD TEAMWORK SKILLS AND HOW DO STUDENTS LEARN THEM?F. R. Truscott1Faculty of Engineering, UCL,London, UKE. M. DiasDepartment of Chemical Engineering, UCL,London, UKF. Akinmolayan TaiwoSchool of Engineering and Materials Science, Queen Mary University of London,London, UKK. RoachFaculty of Engineering, UCL,London, UKI. DireitoCentre for Engineering Education, UCL,London, UKJ. MitchellDepartment of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, UCL,London, UKConference Key Areas: Challenge based education, Future engineering skillsKeywords: teamwork, project-based learning, skills, student reflectionABSTRACTAs modern STEM programmes move to focus on a more skills based curriculum, adifferent approach to conceptualising learning is required. Learning skills is a verydifferent process to learning a list of technical information. In the same way thatbecoming fluent in a language requires more than learning a list of vocabulary.Curricula are addressing this by moving away from solely using knowledge transfermethods and including multiple experiential learning experiences. These experientiallearning experiences allow students to recontextualise existing knowledge, addexperience or tacit knowledge to their learning and practise professional skills suchas problem solving and communication skills repeatedly. [1] [2]1Corresponding AuthorF. R. Truscottf.truscott@ucl.ac.uk027237sg @mmt‘k Bnmedqdmbd+ Dmrbgdcd+ sgd Mdsgdqk‘mcr RFNPS O4ODPRFor teamwork skills in particular, how student learn skills in this context is somewhatlike a black box. [3] We hope that by opening the box lid, with the introduction ofstudent self-reflection, we have increased the effectiveness of experiential learningexperiences. Here we start to analyse these self-reflections to better understand thestudent team process in order to better support students in their learning.This paper focuses on the teamwork skills section of our pilot study. We askedChemical Engineering students to reflect on their teamwork experiences. We presentsome initial findings on student’s ideas on teamwork skills and what they have learntin their teamwork projects. Our findings show that students have a relatively broadview of what teamwork skills are and readily engage in the reflective practise neededto improve those skills.1 INTRODUCTION1.1 Adapting Engineering Education to a New Job MarketNew engineering graduates are entering an employment market that is increasinglyflexible and because of that, skills focused. Regularly published top ten lists of whatskills employers are looking for consist almost exclusively of professional or softskills rather than technical knowledge [4]. The question of how engineering curriculaevolve to meet this challenge and prepare graduates for this new market has beendiscussed at length. Many leading institutions in engineering education havedeveloped and implemented ambitious new curricula and incorporated new teachingmethods [5].One aspect of this is the move to a skills focused approach. Students are providedwith multiple opportunities to acquire and practise the skills that regularly crop up inthose top ten lists. Students work on group projects to learn teamwork, leadershipand delegation. They present to each other improving their technical and non-technical communication skills as well as providing feedback to others. We ask themto produce design proposals and prototypes, on paper and in 3D, to get them familiarwith the design process and improve their problem solving and practical skills.1.2 Why do Skills Need to be Taught Experientially?For many the need to teach a skill through repeated facilitated practice rather thanthe traditional knowledge transfer methods seems obvious. To learn a skill, you mustpractise a skill multiple times to properly understand it. Two concepts can help to usto understand why, recontextualisation of knowledge as discussed by Guile [1] andtacit knowledge, a catch all term used by many but for the purposes of this paper asarticulated by Collins [2].Guile’s recontextualisation theory states that knowledge is not learnt once and neverchanged [1]. A piece of knowledge is not only the information contained in it but alsoevery context that someone has used it in and the connections to other pieces ofknowledge. The information contained in an organic chemistry textbook means onething to a chemist and something different to a pharmacist because they bring the027337sg @mmt‘k Bnmedqdmbd+ Dmrbgdcd+ sgd Mdsgdqk‘mcr RFNPS O4ODPRcontext in which they use the knowledge to its understanding. Thus every time weuse a skill we are recasting it in the context in which we are using it. Hence why weneed to repeatedly use a skill to fully understand it.Tacit knowledge as articulated by Collins was proposed to reconcile the fact that notall information on a scientific method could be included in a written account [2].There is information that can’t be expressed in a written account, for example localknowledge or information that is deemed inconsequential. In applying this idea toskills, becoming proficient at a skill requires a combination of theoretical knowledgeand experience because learning a skill is more than learning a list of information.A key aspect of improving our teaching practise is to understand how students arelearning skills, to ‘lift the lid’ on student learning and use that information to informand improve our practise [3]. The aim of our longitudinal study is to provide someinsight into how student’s learning progresses over time. The first step is tounderstand what students think teamwork skills are. We have used data fromstudents’ self-reflections on teamwork which they completed as part of theirassessment for a team project. The self-reflections, the peer feedback they are inpart based on, have been incorporated into teamwork assessment to walk studentsthrough the experiential learning cycle [7]. Previous work has used self-reflection tolook at students’ perceptions of how their skills have developed [8]. In depthdiscussion of the use of reflection can be found the literature and isn’t the focus ofthis paper. Here we present some initial findings on students’ conception ofteamwork skills and what they learnt during teamwork.2 METHODOLOGY2.1 Project WorkFirst year Chemical Engineering undergraduate students are placed in groups of 5 or6 and asked to work on a project over the course of a week, called a scenario [6].Over the week, each team has various deliverables that they need to complete. Aspart of the assessment of the project, students are asked to complete a structuredteamwork reflection individually. These are marked as pass/fail based on whetherstudents complete the reflection. A sample of these reflections form the data set forthis paper.2.2 Data AnalysisNinety-four students completed the reflection online in our online learning space andthat data was extracted and anonymised before analysis. We used a thematicanalysis of the data. The two questions we have analysed areWhat Are Your MainStrengths? andWhat Did You Learn?. To provide a structure for coding for the firstquestion, coding was based around a list of teamwork skills from an undergraduateteamwork study guide [9] The. list contains a one or two sentence definitions ofteamwork skills which was then converted into the one or two word phrases seen intable 1. Responses were categorised based on the skill definitions. As the coding for027437sg @mmt‘k Bnmedqdmbd+ Dmrbgdcd+ sgd Mdsgdqk‘mcr RFNPS O4ODPRthe first questions did not fit the responses to the second question, coding wasdrawn from the data set.3 RESULTS3.1 What are Good Teamwork Skills?Levin, in his study guide for undergraduate students on teamwork, when talkingabout the somewhat abstract idea of teamwork skills, provides two lists of skills,intellectual and emotional [9]. For him, the primary difference between intellectualand emotional skills being whether or not they can be taught in a classroom; theformer can while the latter one can only learn through experience. Given theconcepts of recontextualisation and tacit knowledge outlined previously, thisdifference seems very artificial but the list of skills does provide a starting point foranalysing students’ thinking on teamwork skills.Below, in Table 1, are the results from coding the students’ reflections on thequestionWhat are your Main Strengths? One important aspect to note is that whilstwe have used Levin’s teamwork skills as a basis for evaluating the studentreflections, what is clear is that students’ definitions of skills vary, with one of themost common being leadership, “I believe that my main strength is leading a groupand delegating roles. … I also think that I am organised, which helps me to be ateam leader.” Student G. Under Levin’s definitions this would fall into ManagerialAwareness rather than Leadership but clearly at this stage of their learning studentsequate decision making and organisation with leadership rather than the moreabstract definition of providing motivation and vision.Table 1. Number of mentions coded as teamwork skills (for definitions see [9])Situation Appreciation 1 Empathic Communication 8Issue Oriented 3 Respectful Communication 22Project Management 0 Negotiation 1Research 8 Realistic Task Setting 0Alternative Sources 0 Social Cohesion 4Articulate Issues 0 Leadership 7Objectives and Constraints 0 Team Support 8Transferability 0 Facilitation 4Team Feel 0 Collective Participation 0Personal Resilience 1 Managerial Awareness 6Social Sensitivity 1 Team Responsibility 2Reflection 0 Other 31The largest category is Other, which covers anything students have referenced thatis not covered in Levin’s skill set, including skills such as punctuality, work ethic,confidence, working under pressure - personal qualities which may make working in027537sg @mmt‘k Bnmedqdmbd+ Dmrbgdcd+ sgd Mdsgdqk‘mcr RFNPS O4ODPRa team easier but are much broader skills that are useful in a range of contexts. Inparticular, time management and meeting deadlines are mentioned a lot, not justwithin Other, but both are frequently referenced alongside other skills. However, themajority of references are in relation to the student only, “My main strength would beI can always finish my work on time” Student AV. Given more data from subsequentstudent projects or from student interviews, we may be the beginning of learningteamwork skills such as, Managerial Awareness, or Team Responsibility, or we mayfind that this coding structure needs to be modified to better reflect students’ thinking.Communication is a key skill for students, with the two communication categories,seeing the same number of mentions as Other. Students clearly feel that being ableunderstand other team members’ viewpoints as well as clearly communicate theirown ideas is very important to successful teamwork.Interestingly, skills such as Social Cohesion, Leadership and Team Support, skillsthat typically have a significant social aspect to them, are mentioned several timesby students; noteworthy given the stereotype of the engineer as lacking in socialskills.3.2 What Did You Learn?We took a thematic approach to the analysis of this question as studentsapproached it in very personalised way. They mentioned skills that they haddiscovered or successfully improved as well as those that they had identified thatneed improvement in the future. Table 2, shows the main themes drawn from thisdata set.Table 2. Skills that students have either improved or need to improveTake Initiative 4 Confidence 12Work Ethic 8 Punctuality 6Organisation 4 Resilience 2Balance 1 Big Picture View 4Presentation Skills 3 Team Support 12Communication 29 Leadership 6Trust 2 Interpersonal Skills 8Non-Specific 15A common theme in the reflections is that students had not realised that they had aparticular skill or that their peers had recognised their efforts, “I was surprised that[they] used this term [in the peer feedback] as I didn’t think I was showing this skill”Student BG. Students also mentioned that this reflective process was useful, “Thisfeedback made me take a step back and evaluate the week's work and how I haveparticipated and worked” Student BM.027637sg @mmt‘k Bnmedqdmbd+ Dmrbgdcd+ sgd Mdsgdqk‘mcr RFNPS O4ODPRCommunication is a key area that students felt that they had either improved in orneeded to improve it to work better within a team. This is part correlates with theprevious question where communication skills were a common teamwork strengththat students identified. Another key area that students identified are InterpersonalSkills and Team Support, again correlating with the previous question.4 SUMMARYOur initial results show that students have a relatively nuanced view of team skills intheir first year of undergraduate study, with mentions of a broad range of skills.There are some clusters in areas such as Communication and Work Ethic but it issatisfying to see some understanding of the social aspects of team work, withmentions of more social focused skills, such as Social Cohesion and Team Support,bucking the stereotype of the engineer with limited social skills. Students found theteamwork experience and the structured reflection useful and were able to identifywhat worked and what needed improvement, hopefully feeding into the experientiallearning cycle. Further work is need to gain insight into students’ learning over timeby linking students’ progression over multiple project work experiences as well asincrease the nuance our analysis to better reflect students’ understanding ofteamwork skills.REFERENCES[1] Guile, D., (2014), ‘Knowledge and Practice as Recontextualization’, in‘Knowledge, Expertise and the Professions’, Ed. Young, M. and Muller, J.,Routledge, (UK), pp 78-92[2] Pinch, T., Collins, H. M. and Carbone, L., (1996), ‘Inside Knowledge: SecondOrder Measures of Skill’, The Sociological Review, Vol. 44, No. 2, pp 163-186[3] Kozlowski, S. W. J. and Ilgen, D. R., (2006), ‘Enhancing the Effectiveness ofWork Groups and Teams’, Psychological Sciences in the Public Interest, Vol.7, No. 3, pp 77-124[4] Rauhut, B. (2007), ‘Educating Engineers for the 21st Century’, Royal Academyof Engineering (London)[5] Graham, R. (2018), ‘The Global State of the Art in Engineering Education’,MIT School of Engineering (USA)[6] Mitchell, J. E., Nyamapfene, A., Roach, K., and Tilley, E., (2019) ‘FacultyWide Curriculum Reform: the Integrated Engineering Programme’, EuropeanJournal of Engineering Education, pp 1-19[7] Kolb, D. A., (2015), ‘Experiential Learning : Experience as the Source ofLearning and Development’, Second ed., Pearson Education, Inc[8] Dunlap, J.C., (2006), ‘Using Guided Reflective Journaling Activities to CaptureStudents’ Changing Perceptions’, Tech Trends, Vol 50, pp 20–26[9] Levin, P., (2004) ‘Successful Teamwork!’, McGraw-Hill Education (UK) pp 13-15

What are good teamwork skills and how do students learn them?

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What are good teamwork skills and how do students learn them?

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