2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This Full Empirical Research Paper investigates how students develop professional skills on extracurricular engineering project teams. Previous literature acknowledges that professional skills are important for engineering students to learn before entering the workforce. However, many practicing engineers do not believe undergraduate engineering students are effectively learning these skills during their undergraduate education. In response, engineering programs have emphasized projects and experiential learning opportunities for students.

Previous research has identified extracurricular engineering project teams as one activity where engineering students develop professional skills, but it has yet to determine how students learn the skills in these spaces. By understanding the processes by which students learn professional skills on extracurricular project teams, instructors may be able to adapt or replicate the project team elements in their classes that promote the development of students’ professional skills. To better understand how engineering students on project teams are learning professional skills, we are guided by the following research question: What elements of project teams prompt engineering students to use professional skills?

Four focus groups were conducted with engineering students participating in extracurricular project teams at their university. The focus groups followed two cycles inspired by Group Level Assessment: generating, appreciating, reflecting, and understanding. The first cycle focused on team structure and organization using activity systems from Activity Theory to illustrate key elements of the team. In the second cycle, guided by the Student Involvement Framework, students incorporated professional skills into their representations and discussed how these skills were learned and developed within their teams. Using thematic analysis, four elements of project teams were identified to be connected with students’ perceived development of professional skills. Specifically, when students created reports, held leadership roles on their teams, collaborated with members of the professional engineering community, and worked on large, diverse teams they were prompted to use and develop a wide range of professional skills.