2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This abstract is for a research brief of an empirical research.

U.S. higher education institutions have started to roll back institutional diversity, equity, and inclusion practices in recent months under political pressures. Despite these challenges, diversity remains a critical component of effective pedagogy in higher education. Existing empirical evidence from non-education setting shows that skill diversity is related to productivity, whereas demographic diversity may not have a direct effect, or has a neutral or marginally negative effect on team performance when holding skill diversity constant. Studies in higher education settings have found a more mixed picture and shown an inverted-U relationship between diversity and team performance. Still, there is a research gap in how different types of diversity affect individual learning and team performance; unpack the heterogeneity in skill diversity and demographic diversity is still needed. Moreover, few empirical research studies in higher education space have validated effective measures to capture team diversity in terms of skill proficiency.

Therefore, this paper addresses the following research questions:
RQ1: What are the relationships between team skill diversity, team experience, and academic outcomes?
RQ2: What are the relationships between team demographic diversity, team experience, and academic outcomes?
RQ3: How do these relationships differ for historically marginalized students (e.g., students of color and female students)?

With Institutional Review Board approval, this study examines students enrolled in a required first-year engineering course (deidentified herein for review as ENGR 150) at a large research-intensive university from 2021 to 2024. Enrolled students worked in fixed teams and collaborated to develop an engineering-based solution for a real-world problem. The study obtained measures of students’ skill proficiency, team experience, and reflections via TeamCoach (pseudonym), an online platform supporting teamwork. Student demographic data and course grades were obtained from university records.

Given the data availability, the research plans to incorporate multiple approaches to measure skill and demographic diversity. The measurement includes the dissimilarity in team member’s previous experience in course-related skills, the dissimilarity in team member ranking in previous experience, and dissimilarity in courses taken prior ENGR 150. For demographic diversity, the paper constructs a multi-faceted demographic dissimilarity index which incorporated dissimilarity in sex, race/ethnicity and student origin (domestic/international student). The research will use multi-variate regression to model the statistical relationships between diversity measures and teamwork outcomes and individual academic outcomes.

This study holds important implications for higher education pedagogy and the design of team-based learning environments. By examining how different forms of team diversity—both in skills and demographics—relate to student learning and collaboration, this work aims to move beyond simplistic assumptions about diversity’s effects. The research will help clarify potentially nonlinear ways in which diversity influences teamwork and individual outcomes. Anticipated insights may inform more intentional team formation strategies that balance the benefits of diverse perspectives with the coordination challenges.

Keywords: Student Diversity, Team Performance, Team Dynamics, Quantitative Analysis