2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

In this Great Ideas for Teaching Students (GIFTS) Paper we present the motivation, background, evolution of development, and practical implementation details of a “team performance and design habit rubric” in a first-year engineering design course (ENES100) at the University of Maryland (UMD).

Every engineering student at UMD takes ENES100 during their time as an undergraduate engineering student, and students are tasked with working in a multidisciplinary team of eight (8) students to design and build an autonomous vehicle that can complete a prescribed mission. The learning objectives of the course include applying modeling techniques in engineering design, creating prototypes of the design, troubleshooting and iteration of design, teamwork and communication, and project management. Thus, in addition to developing the essential skills for engineering design practices, key objectives of ENES100 include building the skills to work equitably on a team, developing a growth mindset, and encouraging reflection both on the team’s designs and the team’s operation.

Out of these learning outcomes grew a need for a tangible way of assessing the team’s operational performance and design habits. To address these needs, the team of instructors for ENES100 developed and implemented a “Team Performance Rubric” that provides multiple performance criteria, a rating scale, and performance indicators relevant to team habits and design habits.

Although there are many tools and software that are available for assessing the performance of a team and gathering peer evaluations [1], a novel aspect of the rubric is a reflective and responsive approach for assessing design practices within the team. A rubric for rating a team’s design habits like “calibration and testing,” “well-constructed prototype,” "effective use of modeling techniques,” “design iteration,” and “integration planning and implementation” was developed for use in assessment. The rubric for design habits and team practices drew inspiration from existing literature [2] and available tools [1]. Additionally, the rubric aims to assess the entire team’s effectiveness, rather than the contributions of an individual member of the team. As such, rubric items and performance indicators were developed to assess “equitable teamwork”, “productive discourse”, “communication tools and techniques”, and “failure, resilience and learning from setbacks.”

This GIFTS paper introduces the Team Performance Rubric developed by the authors and offers an overview of its strengths and limitations, as assessed by the instruction team of ENES100.

[1] M.L. Loughry, M.W. Ohland, D.D. Moore, “Development of a Theory-Based Assessment of Team Member Effectiveness,” Educational and Psychological Measurement, vol. 67, no. 3, pp. 505-524, June 2007.
[2] D. P. Crismond and R.S. Adams, “The informed design teaching & learning matrix,” Journal of Engineering Education-Washington, vol. 101, no.4, pp. 738-797, Oct. 2012.