2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

A Comparative Literature Review: Comparing Approaches to Teamwork Assessment in Engineering Education in the US and China

Presented at Reviewing Emergent Topics and Theory in Engineering Education

Teamwork is considered a critical learning outcome for engineering graduates. Despite the increasingly globalized nature of the engineering workforce and engineering education, there has not been much work comparing approaches to teamwork assessment in different cultural contexts.
This study aims to conduct an exploratory comparative literature review to develop a preliminary understanding of how teamwork has been assessed in engineering education and what approaches have been considered for teamwork assessment in different cultures, with a particular comparative focus on the U.S. and China.
This article will compare these two contexts based on a preliminary analysis of six papers from two prominent journals in engineering education in the two cultures: Journal of Engineering Education (U.S.-based) and Gaodeng gongcheng jiaoyu yanjiu (高等工程教育研究, Research in higher engineering education) (China-based). First, we compare the motivations for teamwork assessment in the two cultural contexts. Second, we summarize how teamwork assessment is conceptualized and defined in these contexts. Third, we compare the methods and tools used to assess teamwork in engineering in the two cultures. Finally, we briefly discuss the implications of such a comparative literature review for constructing a more comprehensive, culturally responsive approach to defining, developing, and assessing teamwork.

Authors

Miss Yi Cao Virginia Tech [biography]

CAO Yi is a Second-year PhD student at the Department of engineering education in Virginia Tech with the guidance of Dr. Jennifer Case. She has been working as research assistant at the International Center for Higher Education Innovation(ICHEI), a UNESCO Category 2 Center for two years. She did several researches related to project-based learning, teamwork assessment and comparative education research.
Dr. Qin Zhu http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6673-1901 Virginia Tech [biography]

Dr. Qin Zhu is Associate Professor in the Department of Engineering Education and Affiliate Faculty in the Department of Science, Technology & Society and the Center for Human-Computer Interaction at Virginia Tech. Dr. Zhu is also serving as Associate Editor for Science and Engineering Ethics, Associate Editor for Studies in Engineering Education, Editor for International Perspectives at the Online Ethics Center for Engineering and Science, and Executive Committee Member of the International Society for Ethics Across the Curriculum. Dr. Zhu's research interests include engineering ethics, global and international engineering education, the ethics of human-robot interaction and artificial intelligence, and more recently Asian American students in engineering.
Dr. Jennifer M. Case Virginia Tech [biography]

Jennifer Case is Head and Professor in the Department of Engineering Education at Virginia Tech. She holds an honorary position at the University of Cape Town. Her research on the student experience of learning, focusing mainly on science and engineerin

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