Student Teams: A Simulation or a Real Team Experience?

The tradition in engineering education places students in teams during their senior year; likely as part of a capstone laboratory or design course. In most cases teams were done on a “pick your own partners” basis. Furthermore, no time was spent discussing teamwork, the importance of teams, how teams should be structured or the skill set one needs to be an effective team member. To some extent, changes made by ABET to their accreditation criteria in 2000 have forced the engineering community to at least assess student teamwork. This, in turn, has motivated many to take a serious look at teamwork training as part of what they teach. How to structure and provide real team experiences for students as part of the academic course of study is a subject of great importance. What do students know about teamwork coming in? What is their perception of the course-based team experience? Why are student teams frequently dysfunctional? Are course-based teams only a simulation or are they in actuality teams? These and other questions have been explored along with ways to enable effective team-based learning experiences that indeed help students grow as team members.