Commitment to team coordination: reflections from undergraduate engineers across three team-based computational modeling projects

Abstract

There has been an increasing focus on teamwork within engineering programs, supported by significant research in response to industry standards on teamwork and the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) requirements. However, despite the crucial role of coordinating technical work in engineering practice, formal education often provides limited structured development of team coordination skills. In light of this, our research endeavors to understand team experiences and identify areas where coordination improvements can be made using the following research questions. (1) What are the teams' coordination commitments as team members reflected upon completing three computational modeling assignments across the different projects? (2) How are the commitments changing across the three projects? (3) What are some common patterns in teams' coordination commitments? The study included 110 undergraduate students organized into 24 teams who engaged in three computational modeling and simulation projects as part of their thermodynamics course. By using a multi-method research approach, we first explored their reflections on commitment to team coordination qualitatively and then identified patterns within the reflection data both quantitatively and qualitatively. The analysis used four previously identified coordination commitment categories: Scheduling and Meeting Coordination, Task Management and Delegation, Collaboration and Teamwork , and Time Management. The distribution of coordination commitment category mentions varied across the three projects. Task Management and Delegation was mentioned most frequently in Project 1, Scheduling and Meeting Coordination in Project 2, and Collaboration and Teamwork in Project 3. Time Management was mentioned at similar rates across the three projects. These findings indicate that teams emphasized different coordination concerns across the projects. However, the observed differences were primarily descriptive; after adjustment for multiple comparisons, only the decrease in Scheduling and Meeting Coordination from Project 2 to Project 3 was statistically significant.