2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This complete evidence-based paper presents a comparative study on student team formation in a first-year design course at a large private university. Many of the first-year students are not familiar with the concept of group projects. It is important to deliver the message to first-year students that those who utilize individual knowledge and strengths in collaborative efforts could potentially achieve greater success than an individual can achieve alone. Team-based exercises are frequently used in educational institutes to promote cooperative and collaborative learning. When it comes to team diversity, a challenging task would be calling for the input and knowledge of people who have distinctive viewpoints and backgrounds to foster insight and innovation. This study used two approaches to investigate the research question: What would be a better approach to form first-year student project teams with fewer team issues: motivation-driven (self-forming) or background-driven (instructor-led)? In the first approach, called the motivation-driven (MD) approach, students volunteered to promote their project ideas in front of the classroom and invited other students to join the project. In the second approach, called the background-driven (BD) approach, students were asked to put down their first and second preferences for the projects, and the instructor facilitated team formation according to their project preferences, gender, racial, social, and academic backgrounds. Overall, five teams were formed with the MD approach, while 18 teams were formed with the BD approach.
The team dynamics were closely monitored by CATME (Comprehensive Assessment of Team Member Effectiveness) throughout the semester. Students completed peer evaluations at three checkpoints over the semester. The comparative analysis between the two approaches was conducted on the five team dimensions: contributing to the team’s work, interacting with teammates, keeping the team on track, expecting quality, and having relevant knowledge, skills, and abilities. According to the peer comments collected over two semesters, the teams that have been formed by BD approaches encountered more task and meeting scheduling issues compared to MD teams. The initial analysis revealed that the student teams formed by the motivation-driven approach encountered fewer team issues than the ones formed by the background-driven approach.