2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Background:
This paper is submitted to the 2024 ASEE Annual Conference in the “Complete Paper - Research” category of the First-Year Programs Division (FPD).
The paper discusses the importance of teamwork in undergraduate education. As Teamwork is a critical skill that employers seek in new graduates, especially within STEM fields where collaboration is often essential. College students, particularly in STEM programs, are required to work in teams early on, allowing them to develop these skills and become competent team players before entering the workforce. For computer science students, who often work in group-based learning environments, teamwork plays a vital role in fostering not only technical skills but also interpersonal and intercultural competencies. The main objective of this research is to explore the relationship between three key variables: teamwork regulation, effectiveness, and their impact on the development of intercultural competence goals. The study seeks to understand how effectively STEM students manage teamwork, how this behavior is reflected in their perceptions, and how these elements contribute to the development of skills that facilitate intercultural understanding.

Methods:
This study is focused on twenty-four first-year computer science students living in a learning community at a large midwestern university. These students participated in semester-long learning community focused on helping students develop professional skills such as teamwork and intercultural competence. As a part of the learning community students participated in various team-based activities and were regularly asked to reflect on two primary areas: their teamwork experiences and their intercultural goals. For this particular study students completed a final reflection at the end of the semester where they reflected on their teamwork experience of working on the capstone project and also set their intercultural goals for the upcoming year. The reflection data provided insights into how they viewed their teamwork experiences and how those experiences intersected with their development of personal intercultural competence goals.

The reflections were analyzed using two distinct rubrics. For assessing teamwork perceptions of team effectiveness (TE) we applied a rubric with categories for adaptability, communication, team cohesion. For evaluating team regulation (TR), we used rubric categories for cognitive regulation, behavioral regulation, and emotional regulation. The team effectiveness and team regulation was scored on a scale from 1 to 3 on the rubrics, reflecting the extent to which students demonstrated these attributes. For the intercultural goals setting, a rubric was used with categories for goal setting, progress and reflection, and application and future planning, scored on a 1 to 4 scale.

After the reflections were scored, we calculated the descriptive statistics for team effectiveness (TE), team regulation (TR) and intercultural competence (IC). Mean standard deviation and median for each of the three was calculated. The median score for team regulation was used to group the high and low categories. Further a matrix was created for team effectiveness and team regulation to identify trends and correlations between teamwork regulation and team effectiveness. Further the relationship between team regulation and intercultural competence goal setting was evaluated. This approach allowed us to visualize the relationship between student teamwork behaviors and their ability to develop intercultural competence.

Results:
Based on the matrix, student responses were grouped into four categories based on their teamwork regulation and team effectiveness scores: high/high, low/low, high/low, and low/high. These categories helped to understand the diversity in teamwork and intercultural skills development.
• High TR/High TE Group: Thirteen students (54%) fell into the high/high category, meaning they demonstrated both strong team regulation and high teamwork behaviors. Of these, ten students also showed high levels of intercultural competence, and the remaining three exhibited moderate levels.
• Low TR/Low TE Group: Four students (17%) were placed in the low/low category, indicating low team regulation and low teamwork. These students showed low levels of intercultural competence.
• High TR/Low TE Group: Seven students (29%) were categorized as low/high, meaning that although they had high team regulation, they showed low teamwork behaviors.
• Low TR/High TE Group: No students (0%) fell into this group
Further, correlation analysis between TE and TR revealed a strong relationship between teamwork regulation and team effectiveness. Also, students who were more capable of regulating their teamwork behaviors also showed higher levels of intercultural competence.