2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Enhancing Teams in Higher Education through Effective Team Dynamics Training

Presented at Design in Engineering Education Division (DEED) Technical Session 8

At Georgia Tech, our Effective Team Dynamics Initiative (ETD) research has developed an integrated curriculum for student-to-student interactions as well as faculty training to help students set up teams for success and navigate challenging team dynamics. The materials include a curriculum guide with in-class and out-of-class activities and a facilitator guide that is used in the training-the-trainer effort. The curriculum has been integrated into a variety of courses where students were already working in teams including first-year seminar, junior design, and capstone design. The objective of the work presented here was to implement and enhance team-training curriculum, to study the impact of this training on learning objective attainment, understand if students would recommend this training to others, understand the course instructors’ opinions around teams and team training, ascertain how course instructors experienced ETD in their classes, and determine if there was a difference between learning objective attainment when different facilitators conducted ETD sessions.

The summative assessment of the ETD undergraduate curriculum that was developed over the past five years showed that students report attainment of the learning objectives. Students (89%) indicated that they were equipped with a language to enable discussion of the diversity of strengths and experiences of their teammates and that they developed specific strategies for their team. Over 80% of students would also recommend the activities to other students. Over 90% of instructors indicated that ETD activities were useful to their students as they worked in teams. The ETD curriculum for undergraduate and graduate students has been implemented at other universities including Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, Polytechnic University of Puerto Rico, and University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, thus showing the transferability of the curriculum.

Authors

Dr. Mary Lynn Realff http://orcid.org/https://0000-0002-0673-8327 Georgia Institute of Technology [biography]

Mary Lynn Realff is the Associate Chair for Undergraduate Programs in the School of Materials Science and Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, Georgia and also Cox Faculty Fellow, Co-Director of the Center for Women, Science, and Technology, and a Fellow of the Center for Deliberate Innovation. Dr. Realff (GT BS Textile Engineering 1987) has served on the faculty at Georgia Tech for 29 years and is currently leading the Effective Team Dynamics Initiative.

Dr. Realff is a transformational leader with a passion for diversity, equity, and inclusion. She led efforts at Georgia Tech and in the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) to change policies and practices to increase diversity. She has been integral in setting organizational strategies across Georgia Tech, the National Science Foundation and the Center for Puppetry Arts. She served as the Vice President of Leadership and Diversity in ASME where the resulting policies and training have influenced the diversity and inclusion strategies of a wide range of professional societies. She has the energy to initiate and the dedication to sustain innovative education programs at the graduate, undergraduate and K-12 levels.

Dr. Realff is the founding director of the Effective Team Dynamics Initiative (ETD) which delivers on the vision that Georgia Tech will be a community where everyone's unique contributions are recognized. ETD cultivates a supportive, productive, and harmonious learning community grounded in strengths-based collaboration. Her operational leadership and strategic oversight has resulted in the initiative impacting 6500 undergraduate and graduate students and 1600 post docs, faculty, and staff in just the past five years. The initiative partnered with the Center for Teaching and Learning to develop the curriculum and train faculty and staff as certified facilitators to deliver its content. Dr. Realff has disseminated this program to other institutions. She directs an NSF sponsored grant in innovation in graduate education which draws on best practices in team work to develop leaders in engineering practice. She has revamped the MSE UG lab experience and MSE curriculum with an emphasis on integrating assessment and including post-doc and graduate student development.

Dr. Realff is a dedicated educator who listens to and advocates for students and has been honored for her teaching and mentoring at Georgia Tech. Her leadership and teaching excellence have been recognized through the Undergraduate Research Mentor Award, Atlanta Partners for Education Business School Partnership Award, CETL/AMOCO Junior Faculty Teaching Award, Outstanding Faculty Award, ANAK Award, CETL Educational Partnership Award, and MSE Faculty Teaching Award. Her service has been recognized through the ASME Dedicated Service Award and the Georgia Tech Diversity Champion Award. In 2007, she was named Fellow of ASME. She earned her B.S. degree in Textile Engineering at Georgia Tech and her Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering and Polymer Science & Engineering at MIT.

She lives in Atlanta with her husband (a Professor at Georgia Tech). They have two children: a son who lives in Japan and a daughter that lives in Wisconsin.
Sydney Mae Ayers
Julianne Latimer Georgia Institute of Technology
Lily Sullivan
Clara Blue Templin Georgia Institute of Technology

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