2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Student accommodations for physical, psychological, or neurological disabilities commonly include extended testing time or a private testing room. However, these accommodations are less helpful in a project-based laboratory course with no exams. Moreover, neurodivergent traits related to time management, social interactions, organization, and producing written assignments may make group work contentious. A project-based lab course at Unnamed University has instructor-formed groups working for the entire term on six lab experiments and a term project. Four of the labs require group-written reports. These reports are accompanied by individually written team assessments where students estimate the percentage of work done by each group member and reflect on group function, what could be improved, and what the group struggled with. Team assessment assignments from 118 groups over three terms were examined using a mixed-methods approach. The difference between the highest- and lowest-rated team members on each team was used as a measure of teamwork, with higher differences indicating less agreement on individual team member performance. These differences were compared for teams that did and did not contain team members with formal accommodations. Additionally, open-ended responses from the team assessments were analyzed for patterns and common themes. Groups with students requiring accommodation had statistically larger differences between students for the first group lab report, but not the others. This result is reinforced by reported improvements in group function for many groups. Additional findings show that neurodiverse students tend to underestimate or overestimate the amount and quality of work they contribute to the team. Targeted intervention from the professor shows some promise of more rapid alignment of team members about teamwork.