This research paper examines how four first-year engineering students interact with one another in teams to answer two research questions: 1) How do students experience working in diverse teams? and 2) Do their perceptions of diversity, affect, and engineering practice change as a result of working in diverse teams? Despite engineering's emphasis on developing students’ teaming skills, little research has been conducted on how students develop sensitivity to students from different cultures and backgrounds within diverse teams. We interviewed four students in a first-semester, first-year engineering team twice for a total of eight interviews to understand their experiences working in diverse teams. Each interview was analyzed using a modified form of Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) to understand the lived experience of each participant. In this paper, we present the results from the qualitative analysis of one team’s complete interviews as a first step in the larger research project.
Results from this first-year engineering team show that in spite of explicit instruction and discussions about the importance of diversity, these students did not wholeheartedly value diversity in teaming activities. This team renegotiated and compromised their operationalization of what diversity meant in their engineering team. While based on individual values, this compromised understanding of diversity in engineering-teaming tasks led to inequitable experiences and lack of growth across the team. It limited the roles students took on during teaming activities, helped establish boundaries around communication in the team, and influenced the type of work teammates were trusted to take on and complete. Despite being from diverse parts of the world, having different experiences with and perceptions of diversity, this student team felt they were more homogeneous than different. Our work highlights the need for a deeper examination of the intricate complexity of teaming experiences during inquiry and design activities.
http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4417-1859
Purdue University - Engineering Education
[biography]
Raised in South Florida, born in Mexico. Half Colombian and half Mexican; proud MexiColombian. Héctor earned his MS in Computer Engineering and is currently pursuing a PhD in Engineering Education, both from Purdue University. His research interests are in investigating the experiences of LGBTQ+ students in engineering, tapping into critical methodologies and methods for conducting and analyzing research, and exploring embodied cognition.
Nelson Pearson is an Ph.D. student at the University of Nevada, Reno. His research interest includes, social networks and the integration of diverse populations, engineering culture as well as engineering pedagogy. His education includes a B.S. and M.S. in Civil Engineering from the University of Nevada, Reno.
Jacqueline (Jacki) Rohde is the Assessment Coordinator in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Her interests are in sociocultural norms in engineering and the professional development of engineering students.
Kyle P. Vealey is an Assistant Professor of English at West Chester University of Pennsylvania. His research interests include technical and professional communication, rhetoric of science, rhetorical theory, and public rhetoric.
Adam Kirn is an Associate Professor of Engineering Education at the University of Nevada, Reno.
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0741-3356
Purdue University, West Lafayette (College of Engineering)
[biography]
Allison Godwin, Ph.D. is the Dr. G. Stephen Irwin '67, '68 Professor in Engineering Education Research (Associate Professor) in the Robert Frederick Smith School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Cornell University. She is also the Associate Director of the Cornell NanoScale Science and Technology Facility and a McCormick Teaching Excellence Institute Research Fellow. Her research focuses on how identity, among other affective factors, influences diverse groups of students to choose engineering and persist in engineering. She also studies how different experiences within the practice and culture of engineering foster or hinder belonging, motivation, and identity development. Dr. Godwin graduated from Clemson University with a B.S. in Chemical Engineering and Ph.D. in Engineering and Science Education. Her research earned her a National Science Foundation CAREER Award focused on characterizing latent diversity, which includes diverse attitudes, mindsets, and approaches to learning to understand engineering students’ identity development. She has won several awards for her research including the 2021 Chemical Engineering Education William H. Corcoran Award, 2022 American Educational Research Association Education in the Professions (Division I) 2021-2022 Outstanding Research Publication Award, and the 2023 AIChE Excellence in Engineering Education Research Award.
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