2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

We often assign group or collaborative activities to engineering technology students as a way to enhance learning. However, these undergraduate students have no experience on a highly functioning engineering team and lack a paradigm of what that team dynamic looks like. Their education has lacked instruction on specific behaviors and mindsets that improve the functioning of an engineering team.
This paper explores the technique of using guided reflection questions to make students aware of behaviors that contribute positively to the functioning of an engineering team. In the class, the students are assigned to groups with which they work on in-class activities of a 15- to 30-minute duration many times throughout the semester . After each activity, they are asked to fill out an online quiz with reflection questions. After a general open-ended question about how their team functioned during the activity, students are asked a much more specific open-ended question about whether they or anyone in their group exhibited a specific behavior during the day’s activity. This specific behavior is chosen to be highlighted in the question because of its research-backed significance to engineering team performance. The intent is that the reflection activity will subtly create the awareness of positive team behaviors without having to assign readings that not all students will read or dedicate lecture time to, which many students will tune out.
To assess the effectiveness of the intervention, students are surveyed throughout the semester on their attitude towards group work, their assessment of their own abilities to contribute to an engineering team, and the effectiveness of the group activities in the class to help them meet course outcomes and objectives.