Pre-engineering in K-12 incorporates teaming as one of the major professional skills. Multiple pre-packaged curricula such as Project Lead the Way include teaming as such a skill. Teamwork skills are explicitly addressed within standards such curricula are based on, such as the NGSS or the Common Core English Language Arts Standards. Attempts to effectively integrate engineering knowledge, skills, and abilities in K-12 can be constrained by teachers lacking time and funding to consider major revisions or additions to their curriculum implementations.
Pandemic is a board game that can be used to teach teamwork in an entertaining, yet serious manner. The game’s features promote interdependency among players by constraining player actions and requiring the leveraging of special roles each player possesses to beat the game as a team. Using a lesson plan developed to teach six core teamwork skills, a high school Project Lead the Way class was administered a game-based intervention. Two rounds of the game were played, with a debriefing in-between sessions of play connecting the gameplay with teamwork skills. Students were assessed for understanding of teamwork in a pretest/posttest format using written reflective essays. These essays were coded using a rubric that categorizes which teamwork skills are emphasized by students and how. Descriptive and comparative analyses of essay content was employed to determine the effectiveness of the intervention in generating awareness and understanding of the six teamwork skills.
Results demonstrated evidence of gains in students’ understanding of teamwork. The ability of students to relate teamwork skills to their gameplay experiences appeared to reinforce their understanding. Using the lesson plans with games moderated by debriefing segments can engage students constructively without generating tedium as traditional classwork does. Additional analysis and data gathering shall hopefully reinforce these findings.
Joshua García Sheridan is a PhD candidate in the Department of Engineering Education at Virginia Tech. He received his Bachelor's of Science in Electrical Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His current research work includes evaluation of remote learning sites for radio engineering coursework, and his current research interests for dissertation center around teachers' pedagogical choice to engage in engineering activities within the K-12 system.
Kenneth Reid is the Associate Dean and Director of the R.B. Annis School of Engineering at the University of Indianapolis and an affiliate Associate Professor in Engineering Education at Virginia Tech. He is active in engineering within K-12, serving on
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