This work in progress paper describes the effect of team reflection on the improvement of team performance in first-year engineering students. Performance skill training is useful in improving team interactions. Since completing engineering design projects alone is a difficult process, it is important that students work well together. The need for engineering students to work well with others will only increase as the students’ progress in their careers.
Within an introduction to engineering design course, students worked in teams to complete two design projects. The design projects involved problem solving, project management, report writing, and interpersonal team building. Students in this course completed a team performance survey at the end of each of the design projects. This allowed the students to reflect on their experience as a team member in the first project, and use this reflective experience to improve their team performance on the second project. These students also completed a survey after the second project to provide additional feedback on their team performance at the end of the course. The results from these two surveys found an improvement in the overall team performance, as well as the student self-appraisal of team ability, at the end of two projects. There was also an increase in the student preference of working on teams, as opposed to working individually.
Dr. Jenahvive Morgan is the instructor for EGR 100 - Introduction to Engineering Design and Academic Director of the First-Year Engineering CoRe Experience at Michigan State University. She is also currently the Director of Positions for the ASEE Women in Engineering Division, as well as an ASCE ExCEED Fellow. Dr. Morgan has a PhD and MS in Environmental Engineering from the University of Michigan, and a BS in Chemical Engineering from Michigan State University. Her interests include innovative laboratory experiments for undergraduate instruction, engineering design for first-year students, and encouraging women to study engineering. For the three years prior to teaching at Michigan State University, she taught freshman and sophomore engineering courses at Rowan University. While at Rowan University she was Co-Director of RILED (Rowan Instructional Leadership and Educational Development), the advisor for the student chapter of the Society of Women Engineers (SWE), and given the ASEE Campus Representative Outstanding Achievement Award. Her teaching experience also includes work as a graduate student facilitator and engineering teaching consultant at the University of Michigan.
I am PhD student in the department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Michigan State University.
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