2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

The use of teamwork in courses has many benefits for students beyond simply the development of collaboration skills. When compared to individual learning alone, teamwork can support deeper understanding of the material, a more interactive class environment, and improved knowledge retention. Therefore, the senior-level design course Coastal Engineering was modified in 2022 with the addition of teamwork elements in two course components: homework assignments and in-class quizzes. The homework assignments were completed in small groups, with teams submitting a joint homework solution. The objective of assigning homework to groups rather than individuals was to have students work together and discuss the problems and course concepts. To discourage “divide and conquer” approaches and hold students accountable for understanding the full homework assignment, students were required to participate in one-on-one homework chats with an instructor. During the chats, students were asked to briefly explain the concepts behind an instructor-selected part of the homework assignment. Teamwork was also added to in-class quizzes, focused on conceptual type questions. The in-class quizzes were closed-book and closed-note, but “open-classmate,” meaning the students were free to interact with other students in the class in any manner they chose prior to submitting their own quiz solution.
Multiple assessments tracked how effectively students were working on teams. The assessments included surveys, administered to students after teamwork activities, to identify both perceived benefits of teamwork and common issues that the students had encountered. Survey responses indicated that team activities greatly enhanced opportunities for developing skills for working cooperatively; students learned to listen to each other’s opinions to solve problems together but were also held individually accountable for understanding the team’s final product through the one-on-one homework chats. After the first two surveys, common teamwork issues reported in the responses were addressed with an in-class session on maximizing team effectiveness. Additionally, direct assessments were conducted by comparing student performance on individually-completed conceptual exam questions between the 2022 cohort and prior cohorts that took the class without the new teamwork elements. The 2022 cohort showed significant improvement in mastery of the course concepts relative to cohorts from several previous semesters.