2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Effective interpersonal communication in senior design teams can be the key to their success or the reason for their failure. The high-risk, high-reward nature of senior project courses can lead to challenging team environments where miscommunication between even just two members can have significant consequences for the whole team. While team member assessment tools that structure feedback have been available for some time (e.g., CATME and similar instruments), direct instruction in interpersonal communication in senior project settings can vary. The senior project faculty in a civil engineering course sequence at a western public polytechnic university incorporated a structured lesson in having better conversations, with modules including state, assumptions, context, listening, and feedback, to equip students with skills to navigate interpersonal relationships more effectively during their senior project course. This work-in-progress paper describes the background and history of the Better Conversations lesson as well as the course, population, and methods employed to measure student learning and the impact of the lesson on the senior project experience. According to survey responses, a large majority of students who participated demonstrated comprehension and valued the Better Conversations tools.