Effective Teamwork among Female Emirati students

Teamwork is an essential component of the engineering design process. The Petroleum Institute (PI) in Abu Dhabi encourages the development of teamwork skills to embody the same principles of professionalism and Emirati values that all employees must demonstrate in the workplace. Instructors working with student teams at every institution, however, are aware of the difficulties that arise with respect to logistics, task assignments, and work quality. Perceptions of effective group dynamics and the contributions of individual team members to the group process can affect the quality of the team experience. In the present study, female students in two engineering design courses at the PI were randomly assigned to teams. As research indicates that females prefer to have some choice in the group creation process, after the first team presentation, one section of the course was given the choice to change their group members. The second section was not given this option. In this paper, the authors discuss the implications of allowing students to choose their own group members compared to random assignment and how group creation can affect perceptions of team effectiveness and overall satisfaction.