Teaching Teamwork: A Training Video Designed for Engineering Students

The ability to communicate and work effectively on a team has increased in importance in the field of engineering as the demands of business and industry have evolved. Engineers today report that communication is critical to their success and spend a large percentage of time interacting with others and working on teams. Despite the need for interaction in practice, industry reports indicate engineering graduates show skill deficiencies in communication and teamwork. Due to the importance of these skills, many encourage their integration into the engineering classroom, suggesting curriculum should emphasize their value and reinforce their importance in students’ future engineering careers. Instructors who teach team skills, or who integrate effective team practices into the design of projects, can set student teams up for success, maximize their learning, and enhance students’ ability to work on teams in the future. Teaching these skills can be challenging however, which led us to create a brief research-based video that integrates research and theory relevant to engineering student teams, from the fields of engineering education and Industrial/Organizational (I/O) Psychology, a field that studies behavior at work. The purpose of this paper is to provide a resource to educators who want to learn more about the practices demonstrated in the video and how to integrate this learning tool into their classroom successfully. We discuss the research and theory behind the strategies modeled and taught in the video, focusing specifically on what instructors can do to improve team effectiveness throughout a project.