Collaborative Research: Investigating Innovative Strategies for Effective Teamwork in Engineering

This project aims to serve the national interest by investigating conditions under which innovative teamwork practices can improve metrics related to students' success in engineering programs. Teamwork is key to engineering success, but little is known about how faculty can effectively facilitate teamwork experiences. Therefore, this Level 2 Engaged Student Learning project plans to advance understandings of practices for effective teamwork for all students. By studying the effectiveness of these innovative practices, the project seeks to contribute to increasing the numbers of students who graduate with engineering degrees. It is anticipated that the research will provide vital and explicit evidence for how specific teamwork facilitation practices influence persistence in engineering by generating empirical evidence of the multidimensional effects of these innovative teamwork practices on engineering students' experiences and perceptions. This has the potential to contribute to a future in which undergraduate engineering students are fully engaged through development, testing, and use of teaching practices and curricular innovations that aim to engage students and improve learning and persistence in STEM. Analyzing how these practices affect factors related to persistence in engineering, and understanding faculty members' experiences utilizing these practices, could lay the groundwork for large-scale institutional improvement in engineering education. The goals of this project are to implement and assess a teamwork intervention and document the effects on students relative to factors influencing persistence in engineering. The project team plans to conduct a nationwide survey and interviews with engineering faculty members about their perceptions of and experiences with facilitating teamwork. Control data will be collected by administering a survey at the beginning and end of the semester in ten courses; the same courses will then receive a teamwork intervention, with the survey repeated to compare pre- and post-intervention results on student success and persistence metrics. Additionally, faculty will be interviewed to examine their experiences, perceptions, and challenges related to implementing the intervention. It is anticipated that characterizing the experiences of faculty will result in research-based plans for refining and scaling up the intervention and associated materials in the future. By developing research-based materials to improve engineering learning environments, partnering directly with faculty developers from around the country, and broadly disseminating the results, this project has the potential to have both national and local impact. The NSF IUSE: EDU 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.