2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

WIP: Identifying the Teamwork Strengths and Challenges of Neurodivergent Undergraduate College Students

The purpose of this WIP paper is to explore how neurodivergence impacts students’ experiences of teamwork in college courses and the factors that influence those experiences. We focus on the strengths neurodivergent students bring to a team setting, the challenges they face, and the support, resources, or accommodations they would access and find beneficial in improving their teamwork experiences.

We conducted 12 semi-structured, one-on-one interviews with neurodivergent undergraduate students at a large research university in the Midwest. Interview questions addressed topics including the impact of neurodivergence on teamwork experiences; contributions and perceived strengths in team settings; challenges and coping strategies; and support and accommodations at the team, instructor, and university levels. We are analyzing interview transcripts using an inductive approach. Currently, the whole research team has begun to analyze the data and create a data-grounded codebook. This WIP paper and presentation will present the codebook as well as the initial implications for teamwork pedagogy.

We anticipate that further coding and analysis will lead to a more robust capture of themes related to students’ experiences in teams, including both the strengths that neurodivergent students and students with mental health concerns bring to team-based learning as well as types of support they would benefit from.

This project will continue with additional interviews of full teams that include neurodivergent students and students with mental health concerns. Our larger goal is to better understand both the assets and challenges students encounter as they collaborate across differences, with the intention of better supporting students in teamwork.

This work aligns with the ECSJ 2025 Pillars by highlighting anti-deficit teamwork pedagogy and promoting social justice and equitable experiences for students. Given the increased focus in engineering courses on teamwork and group-based learning, there is a need to ensure equitable learning opportunities for students of all neurotypes.

Authors

Ella Hedberg University of Michigan [biography]

Ella Hedberg is an undergraduate student at the University of Michigan and a Behavioral Science Fellow at the U-M Center for Academic Innovation. She is pursuing a B.S. in Biopsychology, Cognition, and Neuroscience, with a minor in Crime and Justice.
Caroline Louise Carter University of Michigan [biography]

Caroline Carter is a behavioral scientist at the University of Michigan in the Center for Academic Innovation. She works primarily on Tandem, a tool that helps instructors and students with teamwork.
Xiaping Li http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2620-1690 University of Michigan [biography]

Xiaping Li is a Ph.D. student in Engineering Education Research at the University of Michigan. Her research interests encompass faculty development and instructional change, neurodiverse college student learning experiences and outcomes, GenAI in higher education, and cognitive sciences. She holds a B.S. in Hydrology and Water Resources Engineering and an M.S. in Geological Sciences.
Laura Hirshfield University of California, Berkeley [biography]

Laura Hirshfield is an Assistant Teaching Professor and Director of Undergraduate Education in the Chemical and Biomolecular Department at the University of California, Berkeley. She received her B.S. from the University of Michigan and her Ph.D. from Purdue University, both in chemical engineering. Her research focuses on investigating inequities in student experiences and how that relates to their personal identities.
Dr. Robin Fowler http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6161-0986 University of Michigan [biography]

Robin Fowler is a Technical Communication lecturer and a Engineering Education researcher at the University of Michigan. Her teaching is primarily in team-based engineering courses, and her research focuses on equity in communication and collaboration as well as in group design decision making (judgment) under uncertainty. She is especially interested in how power relationships and rhetorical strategies affect group judgment in engineering design; one goal of this work is to to understand factors that inhibit full participation of students who identify with historically marginalized groups and investigate evidence-based strategies for mitigating these inequities. In addition, she is interested in technology and how specific affordances can change the ways we collaborate, learn, read, and write. Teaching engineering communication allows her to apply this work as she coaches students through collaboration, design thinking, and design communication. She is part of a team of faculty innovators who originated Tandem (tandem.ai.umich.edu), a tool designed to help facilitate equitable and inclusive teamwork environments.
Prachi Shah University of Michigan

Note

The full paper will be available to logged in and registered conference attendees once the conference starts on June 22, 2025, and to all visitors after the conference ends on June 25, 2025

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