Practicing What we Preach: A Multi-Disciplinary Team Teaching Multi-Disciplinary Teamwork

The Faculty of Engineering at the University of Waterloo has recognized that the development of student teamwork skills requires immediate attention across all undergraduate programs. A multi-disciplinary team was assembled to address this challenge via the design and implementation of a set of learning modules. The team was made up of engineering faculty members, graduate students, and representatives from a student support unit, a teaching support unit, and the First Year Engineering office. In itself, a study of the dynamics and achievements of this team of faculty and staff members from across campus provides a rich opportunity to examine authentic team behaviour. It can also serve as a model for others considering the launch of educational initiatives involving people from a wide variety of departments and units. In this paper, we describe what we have learned about assembling, and working effectively in, a multi-disciplinary team. Placing it all in the context of the literature on teams and team performance, we discuss the initiative and team formation; conflicts that occurred while developing the modules and how they were handled by the team; and the immense value and challenges that exist in working within a multi-disciplinary team. We also describe some of the obstacles that emerge when integrating teamwork training in engineering curricula while operating largely outside formal curriculum committees.