2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Work-in-Progress: Understanding Teamwork: A Thematic Analysis of Student Experiences in Robotics Courses

This Work-in-Progress (WIP) work presents initial analysis of student teamwork experiences in core undergraduate robotics courses. Robotics, as an interdisciplinary field, brings together students from diverse backgrounds to work in teams on designing and implementing robotic systems capable of sensing, reasoning, acting, and interacting. Investigating students’ teamwork experiences provides valuable insights that can help instructors foster collaboration and enhance learning outcomes.

We present thematic analysis results from student feedback in two different upper-level core robotics courses at a large Midwestern university. The first course emphasizes hands-on mobile robotic projects, involving assembly, construction, and software implementation of path planning and navigation algorithms. The second course focuses on human-robot interaction, centering on participant studies and the dynamics of communication between humans and robots. Using Tandem, an online platform that supports student teams, we collected both qualitative and quantitative feedback through student reflections and peer reviews at multiple milestones across the semester.

A thematic analysis was performed on the student self- and peer- assessments. Our analysis explores factors related to effective collaboration and teamwork experience. We specifically address the following research questions: (1) Do students attribute achievements and challenges to themselves or to their team, and how do these attributions differ between self and peer assessments? (2) How are technical and non-technical skills, including effort, reflected in student feedback, and do these patterns differ between technically focused versus communication- oriented courses? Through thematic coding, frequency analysis, and interpretation of qualitative teamwork feedback data, we conducted analysis on several aspects of teamwork experience including technical and communicative skill development, course logistics and office hour schedules, and singular versus plural contribution (“I” vs. “we”). We observed some initial patterns of the students primarily attributing activities to themselves (“I”) in both self and peer assessments, and the technical efforts were emphasized more strongly in the more technically focused course. We hope the findings of this study help educators understand the factors that promote the student team experience and inform the design of future multidisciplinary robotics courses.

Authors

Dr. Xiaoxiao Du http://orcid.org/https://0000-0003-1504-966X University of Michigan [biography]

Xiaoxiao Du is a Lecturer at the University of Michigan. She teaches robotics courses and supervises multidisciplinary teams and design experiences. She is interested in promoting student learning and team collaboration through innovative curricular design and data-informed evaluation.
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.
Laura Hirshfield University of California, Berkeley [biography]

Laura Hirshfield is an Assistant Teaching Professor and the Director of Undergraduate Education in chemical engineering 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, before transitioning into the engineering education research field. Her research focuses on investigating how students' intersection of personal identities relate to their sense of belonging and engagement in groups and teams.

Note

The full paper will be available to logged in and registered conference attendees once the conference starts on June 21, 2026, and to all visitors after the conference ends on June 24, 2026

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Broadening Participation in Engineering and Engineering Technology
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