2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Data-driven Strategy for Maintaining an Effective Team Collaboration in a First-year Engineering Course

Presented at First-Year Programs Division (FYP) - Technical Session 6: Mentors & Teams

In this experience-based practice paper, peer-to-peer evaluation was used to improve students’ team-based learning experience. For the future workforce, the ability to collaborate well in multidisciplinary teams is a highly valued professional skill. Many educational institutions have implemented project-based learning to develop students’ teamworking skills. One of the top challenges is to manage the potential conflicts after team formation. Although constructive
conflict may increase team productivity according to Tuckman, conflicts were viewed as negative and the primary cause for dysfunctional teams (Tuckman, 1965). A critical first step for first-year students to achieve team success is to understand what types of negative conflicts could emerge, as well as training to understand how to cope with and/or resolve the conflicts. The research question of this study is: How could course instructors effectively use peer evaluations to guide first-year students on resolving negative conflicts?

In a large private institution, six hundred first-year engineering students participate in free-choice open-ended semester-long projects annually. The primary aim is to allow students to explore, prototype, and refine possible solutions to tackle real-world problems through project-based, collaborative learning. As the teams may have issues such as interpersonal relationships, mismatched schedules, task assignment, and leadership responsibilities, an effective tracking platform is required to manage more than 70 teams per semester. CATME (Comprehensive Assessment of Team Member Effectiveness) peer evaluations consist of two parts: quantitative rating as well as written confidential comments to the instructor and shared peer-to-peer comments.

CATME highlights potential conflicts based on self-adjustment factors. This study aims to categorize the conflicts by training a text classifier. Firstly, all the comments were filtered to identify negative comments by sentimental analysis. The negative comments were then categorized into major issues mentioned by the Lencioni Model: lack of trust, fear of conflict, lack of commitment, avoidance of accountability; inattention to results. A detailed intervention guideline would also be provided in this study. A mixed method analysis was used to evaluate the impact of instructors’ interventions.

Authors

Dr. Rui Li New York University Tandon School of Engineering [biography]

Dr. Rui Li earned his Master's degree in Chemical Engineering in 2009 from Imperial College of London and his Ph.D in Electrical and Computer Engineering in 2020 from the University of Georgia, College of Engineering. He is currently an industrial assistant professor, who works in General Engineering program at New York University. He taught first-year engineering course as well as vertically integrated project. He has strong interests in educational robotics, project-based learning and first-year STEM education.
Ms. Victoria Bill Colorado School of Mines [biography]

Victoria Bill is the Founding Director of the Innovation Hub at the Colorado School of Mines. She previously served as the Founding Manager and then Managing Director of the MakerSpace Lab and Experiential Learning Center at NYU Tandon School of Engineering. At NYU, she also taught in the first-year engineering program and the vertically integrated projects program. She studied electrical engineering and received her B.S. from the Ohio State University and her M.S. from the University of Texas at Austin. She is currently pursuing her PhD in Engineering Education from the Ohio State University.
Ingrid Paredes http://orcid.org/https://0000-0001-8246-5239 New York University Tandon School of Engineering [biography]

Dr. Ingrid J. Paredes is an Industry Assistant Professor in the First-Year Engineering Program at NYU Tandon School of Engineering. She studied chemical engineering and received her B.S. and M.S. at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, and her Ph.D. at NYU Tandon School of Engineering. Her interests include diversity, equity, and inclusion in higher education and sustainability education for engineers.
Dr. Jack Bringardner http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5980-384X Colorado School of Mines [biography]

Jack Bringardner is a Teaching Associate Professor and Director of Education Innovation at Colorado School of Mines in the Engineering, Design, and Society Department. He teaches the first-year engineering Cornerstone design course. His primary focus is developing curriculum, mentoring students, and engineering education research, particularly for project-based courses, the first-year engineering experience, and student professional skills. He is active in the American Society for Engineering Education and serves on the First-Year Programs Division Executive Board and was the past Webmanager for the ASEE First-Year Programs Division and the First-Year Engineering Experience Conference. He is on the Executive Steering Committee for the Vertically Integrated Projects Consortium. Prior to working at Colorado School of Mines, he was the Assistant Dean for Academics and taught Introduction to Engineering and Design at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering.

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