2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Universities are incorporating more team-based learning (TBL) opportunities throughout their curricula to prepare students for the engineering profession, as observed with courses such as cornerstone and capstone design. Prior research has indicated the importance of design courses in engineering curriculum as it provides students with critical thinking skills in a conceptual setting alongside other students. However, the engineering profession is not as seamless as academic design experiences would suggest, as there are constantly changing requirements, resources, and budgets – what we coin “design volatility”. Students do not typically experience design volatility, as most of their courses are well organized with a fixed syllabus. This paper examines the impact of design volatility on perception of individual and peer contribution to a semester-long, sophomore level design project. We investigate design volatility occurrences through the lens of team and peer contribution to determine how students can function on a team during design changes, as we hypothesize design volatility will impact student perception of team contribution toward a project.
To investigate this phenomenon, students were asked to complete two web-based Comprehensive Assessment of Team Member Effectiveness (CATME) Peer Evaluation surveys to assess themselves and their teammate with respect to their contribution to the project and their satisfaction with the team interaction. The initial CATME survey was administered approximately 60% of the way through the semester, when the student teams had finalized their project designs and near project completion. The students were informed shortly thereafter of a design change: the primary requirement of the project had changed, requiring the teams to reassess existing designs. At the end of the project, students were administered a second CATME survey to determine if the design volatility had an impact on the team dynamics. The results of both surveys were statistically compared for significant differences.
The results of the study suggest that student perception of their peer’s contribution was unchanged following the design change. However, the students’ perception of their individual contribution changed, specifically regarding their contribution to the teamwork and their expectation of quality in the final product.