2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This Complete Research paper describes the outcomes of using a simulated environment for teaching assistants (TAs) to practice managing conflicts on teams of undergraduate students engaged in a design project. Team-based projects are frequently used in engineering undergraduate courses and especially in introductory engineering courses. In addition to technical competence, team-based design projects support the development of collaboration and communication skills and engage novice engineers in higher levels of thinking.

To support students to work effectively on teams, it is important for instructors to identify and help mitigate team conflicts. Previous studies have identified “social loafing”—defined as reduced motivation, effort, or performance from individual team member(s)—as the most prevalent problem within student teams, particularly in early undergraduate years. Social loafing may be a misnomer. In our experience, a student not engaging in a team as expected could arise from logistical barriers to participation, marginalization by other team members, or disinterest in the major/project.

Routine use of peer evaluation, such as Comprehensive Assessment of Team Member Effectiveness (CATME), can alert an instructor or TA to a team conflict; they can then discern the true cause of this conflict to remedy the situation. However, there is little guidance for instructors or TAs on how to coach individuals and teams toward more effective team behaviors when engagement-related conflict occurs. Our institution uses a cadre of undergraduate TAs to mentor student teams in our large-enrollment (ca. 700 students) introductory engineering course. We are motivated by the need to develop a coaching program for TAs to help design teams experiencing engagement-related conflicts.

In pre-college education, simulated classrooms with student avatars are increasingly being used to help educators practice challenging discussions. These simulated environments provide a safe virtual environment for educators to practice their skills. Mursion® is a simulated environment that involves educators or other users interacting with avatars through Zoom. Avatars are controlled by a highly trained human-in-the-loop called a simulation specialist (or “sim”). The sim voices and moves the avatars using hardware and the Mursion software system.

Our work involves the development of a team conflict scenario to use within the simulated environment to help TAs facilitate one-on-one discussions with students on a design team. The purpose of those discussions is to diagnose the reason for each student avatar’s disengagement from the team and to consider subsequent interventions depending on the cause. The research objectives were to investigate (1) the participants’ pre-existing perceptions of team conflicts, (2) whether the participants identified the primary reason for each student avatar’s disengagement, (3) participants’ perceptions of the authenticity of the scenario, and (4) participants’ perceptions of how helpful the simulated environment would be for coaching TAs.

The scenario we developed describes a fictional team of five student avatars in an introductory engineering course engaged in a semester-long product design project. Participants prepared for the discussion by reading a document containing descriptions of the team and student avatars, and CATME peer evaluation results that indicated that three of the student avatars may be contributing less than expected. During the simulation session, each participant facilitated one-on-one discussions (15 or fewer minutes each) with each of these three student avatars to understand the nature of the conflict from their perspective.

We invited a pool of undergraduate TAs with experience mentoring student design teams at the University of X to participate in the study. From this pool, we recruited twelve third- and fourth-year undergraduate engineering students with a variety of intersectional identities. Data we collected pertinent to the present study include (1) demographic information from a Consent and Background Survey, (2) Likert scale and open text response survey items from a Pre-Simulation Survey, and (3) Likert scale and open text response survey items from a Post-Simulation Survey.

Results indicate that the study participants found the one-on-one discussions with student avatars in the simulated environment to be realistic and easy to use. They reported that the responses and behaviors of the student avatars were typical compared with actual students with whom they have worked in their role as TAs. Most of the participants were able to correctly identify the primary cause for conflict for each of the student avatars. However, identifying marginalization appears to be a challenge for some TAs. All participants indicated that they were comfortable facilitating a subsequent discussion with the entire team. These results support our ongoing efforts to build a portfolio of coaching strategies to address issues stemming from interpersonal team dynamics in design teams.