Enhancing design team interaction by understanding communication styles

Abstract

When developing a new civil engineering capstone design course, the course coordinators enlisted the support of an organizational coach to incorporate exercises where the students learn to understand different personalities, communication styles, and levels of assertiveness. Early in the course, the course coordinators divide the class into six-person teams. The coordinators assign teams based on a number of factors including academic performance, academic background, preferred civil engineering emphasis area, and practical engineering experience. After assigned to a team, each student then evaluates his or her preferred communication style. The students then investigate how their teammates' styles differ from their own. The students also learn techniques for tailoring their own communication style to fit the needs of others. The primary objective of the exercises is to enhance communication among teammates who are preparing to complete a group design project over a six-month period. The paper briefly describes how the authors incorporated the communication styles exercises into the course. An outcome for the civil engineering program requires that our graduates demonstrate an ability to function on a multidisciplinary civil engineering team. Under this outcome, the program defines a performance metric that requires our graduates to demonstrate an ability to evaluate different communication styles. We present the methodology used to assess this performance metric, along with assessment results gathered over the past six years. These results play an important role in the program's assessment of communication-related outcomes. © American Society of Engeneering Education, 2013.