2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Revisiting Tuckman’s Team Development Model in First-year Engineering Multicultural Teams

Presented at Student Teams and Teamwork

Tuckman’s team development model is a framework to guide team training and intervention along five stages of group development: forming, norming, storming, performing, and adjourning. However, Tuckman’s model may have caveats when used as a guiding theoretical or conceptual framework to investigate student team experiences, especially in their first year, given their unique circumstances. Based on evidence collected from students in first-semester engineering foundation courses, we argue that the teaming stages are not discrete and linear but convoluted and likely iterative. As case studies, this project conducted semi-structured interviews with first-year engineering students from a summer session to better improve our understanding of teammate interaction. The interview questions were constructed following the stages and associated features of Tuckman’s team development model. Within each stage of group team development, we focused on soliciting significant milestones and key events from the participants. We also attempted to understand the role of students with multicultural backgrounds in the team and how they influence the dynamics. Our results echo the criticism of Tuckman’s model – that student teamwork experiences cannot be aligned with the five linearly prescribed stages. For example, students reported they might never experience conflicts in the storming stage. After presenting our findings on students’ experiences of team development, we will provide a critique of Tuckman’s model and offer suggestions on how to use it to guide further teamwork studies for researchers and instructions for practitioners.

Authors

Mr. Siqing Wei http://orcid.org/https://0000-0002-7086-5953 Purdue University at West Lafayette (COE) [biography]

Siqing Wei received B.S. and M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Purdue University. He is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Engineering Education program as a triple boiler. His research interests span on three major research topics, which are teamwork, cultural diversity, and international student experiences. As a research assistant, he investigates how the cultural diversity of team members impacts the team dynamics and outcomes, particularly for international students. He aims to help students improve intercultural competency and teamwork competency by interventions, counseling, pedagogy, and tool selection to promote DEI. In addition, he also works on many research-to-practice projects to enhance educational technology usage in engineering classrooms and educational research. Siqing also works as the technical development and support manager at the CATME research group.
Amirreza Mehrabi Purdue University [biography]

I am Amirreza Mehrabi, a Ph.D. student in Engineering Education at Purdue University, West Lafayette. Now I am working in computer adaptive testing (CAT) enhancement with AI and analyzing big data with machine learning (ML) under Prof. J. W. Morphew at the ENE department. My master's was in engineering education at UNESCO chair on Engineering Education at the University of Tehran. I pursue Human adaptation to technology and modeling human behavior(with machine learning and cognitive research). My background is in Industrial Engineering (B.Sc. at the Sharif University of Technology and "Gold medal" of Industrial Engineering Olympiad (Iran-2021- the highest-level prize in Iran)). Now I am working as a researcher in the Erasmus project, which is funded by European Unions (1M $_European Union & 7 Iranian Universities) which focus on TEL and students as well as professors' adoption of technology(modern Education technology). Moreover, I cooperated with Dr. Taheri to write the "R application in Engineering statistics" (an attachment of his new book "Engineering probability and statistics.")
Li Tan Arizona State University [biography]

Li Tan is an Assistant Professor of Engineering Education Systems and Design in the Polytechnic School at Arizona State University.
Dr. Matthew W. Ohland http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4052-1452 Purdue University at West Lafayette (PWL) (COE) [biography]

Matthew W. Ohland is the Dale and Suzi Gallagher Professor and Associate Head of Engineering Education at Purdue University. He has degrees from Swarthmore College, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and the University of Florida. His research on the longitudinal study of engineering students and forming and managing teams has been supported by the National Science Foundation and the Sloan Foundation and his team received for the best paper published in the Journal of Engineering Education in 2008, 2011, and 2019 and from the IEEE Transactions on Education in 2011 and 2015. Dr. Ohland is an ABET Program Evaluator for ASEE and represents ASEE on the Engineering Accreditation Commission. He was the 2002–2006 President of Tau Beta Pi and is a Fellow of the ASEE, IEEE, and AAAS. He was inducted into the ASEE Hall of Fame in 2023.

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