2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Collaboration is central to engineering education and professional practice, yet evidence suggests that engineers often underperform in certain collaborative behaviors critical to effective teamwork. This poster paper, part of the NSF-funded project Collaboration in Engineering Student and Practitioner Teams: A Study of Beliefs about Effective Behaviors (EEC-2217523), investigates which collaborative behaviors are least frequently performed by engineering students and practitioners. Using the Comprehensive Assessment of Team Member Effectiveness—BARS version (CATME-B) as a framework, we conducted a Q-sort activity to identify “target behaviors,” or those that are underperformed across both populations. Survey data were collected from 107 engineering students enrolled in interdisciplinary capstone courses at two R1 public universities and 27 engineering practitioners representing diverse organizations. Descriptive analyses revealed that both groups reported low frequencies for three behaviors: (1) noticing changes that influence the team’s progress, (2) knowing what everyone on the team should be doing and noticing problems, and (3) having the ability to perform tasks normally done by other team members. We also found a significant difference between students and practitioners in how they ranked the behavior related to having the knowledge, skills, and abilities to contribute to the team’s progress. Our findings highlight shared gaps in teamwork between academic and professional contexts, suggesting that the challenges observed in workplace collaboration often emerge during students’ formative educational experiences. These results underscore the need for targeted interventions in engineering education to strengthen awareness, engagement, and adaptability in team settings. In the second phase of our study, we conducted 60-minute one-on-one interviews with 10 students and 14 practitioners and applied the Reasoned Action Approach to examine the underlying beliefs and contextual factors influencing the performance of these target behaviors. Our focus on examining the belief structures and contextual factors that underlie key teamwork gaps contributes to a deeper understanding of how collaborative competencies develop across the academic–professional continuum. These insights can guide the future design of curricula and professional development initiatives that more effectively prepare engineers to navigate the complex, interdependent nature of engineering practice.