TEAM-BASED NEGOTIATION OF IDEAS ON DESIGN DECISION MAKING PERFORMANCE

摘要

Engineering in the 21st century is becoming a more social process with multiple stakeholders. Nowadays, many engineering design projects are undertaken by project teams consisting of various disciplinary content experts. This type of engineering work requires domain knowledge coupled with many professional skills such as teamwork, collaboration, communication of ideas, decision making, etc. Recent reports such as the Engineer of 2020 have recognized that such skills are essential in the education of the next generation of engineers. The challenge is finding effective instructional methods that develop these skills without large amounts of instructional overhead. Engineering instructors often utilize project based design courses to engage and develop many of the professional skills students will need in the workplace. Although students are exposed to teamwork in their engineering curriculum, it is not the most dominant mode of their learning experience. Students may encounter difficulty in communicating and negotiating their ideas with team members unless they are given tools and strategies to support the process. They also need multiple opportunities to engage and use these methods as part of their curricular experience so they are better prepared after graduation. Prior research on teaming provides some ideas about how to design experience that promote effective teaming behavior. We have experimented with multiple methods to support the process in first year engineering courses and anticipate these skills transferring to future team situations. However, we also recognize the need for teams to think with their domain knowledge as they engage in engineering activities. We are interested in the inquiry of how teams continue to use effective teaming process skills and learn to collaborate together to learn new content and to systematically make decisions related to activities like design, and troubleshooting.