2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

A Quantitative Analysis on Teamwork Behavior, Disagreement, and Their Linkages to Students’ Engineering Identities

Presented at Student Teams and Teamwork

This Work-in-Progress paper explores how teamwork experience informs students’ engineering identity. Teamwork skills are highly valued by employers but are lacking in many engineering graduates. While little is known about the linkage between teamwork and EI, understanding that connection is crucial for inclusive teaching and learning activities because engineering identity may be disproportionately lower for some students, and teamwork designed without considering EI may exacerbate that gap.

We conducted Spearman’s correlation analyses on the survey responses of 268 students from 18 engineering classes that have a significant teamwork component over two semesters at a four-year Hispanic Serving Institution. All survey instruments had been validated by prior researchers. EI was cast by a uni-dimensional definition as well as a multi-dimensional lens of performance/competence, interest, and recognition. The teamwork survey assessed team behaviors using the CATME questions, team disagreement (on task, process, and relationship), conflict patterns, and psychological safety. The results revealed a complex and interconnected relationship between engineering identity, disagreement, and teamwork behaviors. We found that task/process conflicts could slide into relationship conflict, suggesting that our students may “have difficulty disagreeing without being disagreeable.” Among the dimensions of engineering identities, students who were confident about engineering self-efficacy were found to exhibit more positive teamwork behaviors. Recognition from parents, professors, or peers also played an important role in shaping all but one behavior metric. Conflicts connected with teamwork behaviors and EI in a nuanced way and must be addressed through multivariate statistical models that control for psychological safety and demographics. In future work, we plan to explore multivariate analysis.

Authors

Dr. Yiyi Wang San Francisco State University [biography]

Yiyi Wang is an assistant professor of civil engineering at San Francisco State University. In addition to engineering education, her research also focuses on the nexus between mapping, information technology, and transportation and has published in Accident Analysis & Prevention, Journal of Transportation Geography, and Annuals of Regional Science. She served on the Transportation Research Board (TRB) ABJ80 Statistical Analysis committee and the National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) panel. She advises the student chapter of the Society of Women Engineers (SWE) at SFSU.
Dr. Xiaorong Zhang San Francisco State University [biography]

Xiaorong Zhang received the B.S. degree in computer science from Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China, in 2006, the M.S. and the Ph.D. degrees in computer engineering from University of Rhode Island, Kingston, in 2009 and 2013 respectivel
Fatemeh Khalkhal San Francisco State University [biography]

Dr. Khalkhal is an assistant professor in mechanical engineering at San Francisco State University (a primarily undergraduate and Hispanic-serving Institution). Her research experience is in developing structure-property relationships in complex fluids and polymer composites, broadening the participation of women and underrepresented minorities in engineering, and understanding the relationship between teamwork experience and team disagreements in the formation of engineering identity among diverse students.
Dr. Stephanie Claussen San Francisco State University [biography]

Stephanie Claussen is an Assistant Professor in the School of Engineering at San Francisco State University. She previously spent eight years as a Teaching Professor in the Engineering, Design, and Society Division and the Electrical Engineering Departments at the Colorado School of Mines. She holds a B.S. in electrical engineering from MIT and a M.S. and Ph.D in electrical engineering with a Ph.D. minor in education from Stanford University.
Ana Karen Biviano

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