Team Formation and Function Decisions and Student Roles on Diverse Engineering Design Teams

Abstract

In this work in progress paper, we present our research on the teaming experiences of undergraduate engineering students in an engineering design projects ecosystem. The ecosystem consists of projects that vary in size, student-level, and goals. We present a literature review on team formation and function and the role of psychological safety on students' experiences. We then present foundational results from our survey data which we will use to inform a subsequent interview study. Our current results illuminate how student roles are assigned on the teams and show that students report strong psychological safety with their fellow team members, with student team leaders, and with project advisors. We perform pairwise statistical tests to determine if significant differences in responses exist between different groups of students and if correlations exists between responses to different questions or the grade students receive in the course. Finally, we propose an interview study that aims to examine details and descriptions of the teaming experience in the students' voices.