2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Teamwork skills are essential for engineers to be successful in their careers. Engineers often work in teams to solve complex problems, requiring a need to communicate effectively. Unfortunately, learning soft skills such as teamwork, can pose a significant challenge for engineering-minded students, often resulting in frustration for both students and instructors alike. To address this issue, we implemented an innovative approach toward group lab-writing in a lab class for 35 Junior-level Chemical Engineering students. In this study, individual contributions were worth 30% toward the group-written lab report. Students were required to complete their individual contributions 24 hours before the group-written report was due as a completion grade. The group lab report was graded on quality and was worth the other 70%. The purpose of this initiative was twofold: 1) to enhance accountability among team members, as students’ individual grades now reflect their individual contributions, and 2) to foster better time management skills, reducing last-minute group efforts.
Our findings suggest that the inclusion of an individual portion in group assignments has a positive impact on students. Average scores for the individual contribution portion of the lab reports were 92%. Survey results show that students were more engaged with their own work by fostering a sense of ownership over their contributions. Additionally, the new approach was shown to increase accountability within individual members of the groups, as students who self-identified as “waiting to the last minute” were shown to submit individual portions on time 75%. Furthermore, the early submission requirement encourages effective time management among students, exemplified by the on-time submission of 94% of individual portions, thereby diminishing the likelihood of last-minute, hurried group work. Additionally, the entire class exhibited a perfect 100% on-time submission rate for group assignments. Finally, students found group work more enjoyable with this method of submission. When surveyed students' opinions of teamwork improved by 1 point (out of 5) on average. This research highlights the potential benefits of incorporating individual portions in group assignments, paving the way for improved teamwork, accountability, and time management skills among students.