Teamwork challenges and solution strategies of first-semester engineering students

摘要

Teamwork is an important skill for today’s engineers, who often work in international teams where decision making, problem solving, and all communication aspects need to be dealt with efficiently. It is important therefore to familiarize engineering students with challenges they will face in such situations and provide them with related practical experiences before they enter the labour market. And while engineering students typically have opportunities to work in project teams, those teams are often assembled by students themselves, unlike real project teams in which engineers cannot always choose their teammates. This paper explores dynamics of student teams formed in a way that maximizes group heterogeneity in terms of academic success, geographical origin, and gender, and thereby minimizes probability of students already knowing each other. In such conditions, students are assigned a task to solve in teams of five. Teams’ work results and reflections collected through a questionnaire were used to identify typical challenges students face, and strategies they employ to solve them. Educational implications and improvements of this intervention are discussed in the paper.