scholarly journals DEVELOPMENT OF THE INDIVIDUAL AND TEAM WORK ATTRIBUTE AMONG UNDERGRADUATE ENGINEERING STUDENTS: TRENDS ACROSS 4 YEARS OF ASSESSMENT

Author(s):  
A. Grocutt ◽  
A. Barron ◽  
M. Khakhar ◽  
T.A. O'Neill ◽  
W.D. Rosehart ◽  
...  

The Engineers Canada Accreditation Board outlines 12 Canadian Engineering Graduate Attributes required for program accreditation. One of these attributes is Individual and Team Work. Since 2016, at the University of Calgary, there has been a voluntary, undergraduate-wide survey administered to the Schulich School of Engineering students every spring via an online platform. The purpose of the survey is to assess students’ perceived development of teamwork skills during their program, and identify avenues to improve program offerings. After four consecutive years of this survey, with sample sizes ranging from 683-973 students, there are three main trends that can be identified: students perceive teamwork skills as highly important for their future careers, there are noticeable differences between male and female students regarding teamwork experiences, and students value teamwork skills training and opportunities for peer feedback. Implications of these findings are that there are gendered teamwork experiences among undergraduate engineering students and more research is needed to understand interventions that can mitigate this.

Author(s):  
Thomas O'Neill

Engineers Canada Accreditation Board lists12 Canadian Engineering Graduate Attributes necessaryfor program accreditation. One of these is the Individualand Team Work attribute. At the University of Calgary anannual survey has been developed to assess studentperceptions of teamwork. The survey examines students’overall satisfaction with teamwork activities, attitudestowards teamwork, perceived emphasis and supportreceived from the department, teamwork skills(competence and importance), and personal support forteamwork initiatives. Based on the responses from pastyears two trends can be identified: students perceive agap between their competence in teamwork skills and theimportance of those skills, and students show high levelsof support for more teamwork initiatives. Following thesetrends three recommendations can be made: teamworkskills development activities for the students, moreopportunities for peer feedback in team projects, andsupport for first year students. By annually administeringassessments engineering departments can evaluate theirsuccess in developing the necessary Individual and TeamWork attribute required by Engineers CanadaAccreditation Board for program accreditation.


2015 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 121-128 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miguel Aizpun ◽  
Diego Sandino ◽  
Inaki Merideno

<p>In addition to the engineering knowledge base that has been traditionally taught, today’s undergraduate engineering students need to be given the opportunity to practice a set of skills that will be demanded to them by future employers, namely: creativity, teamwork, problem solving, leadership and the ability to generate innovative ideas. In order to achieve this and educate engineers with both in-depth technical knowledge and professional skills, universities must carry out their own innovating and find suitable approaches that serve their students. This article presents a novel approach that involves university-industry collaboration. It is based on creating a student community for a particular company, allowing students to deal with real industry projects and apply what they are learning in the classroom. A sample project for the German sports brand adidas is presented, along with the project results and evaluation by students and teachers. The university-industry collaborative approach is shown to be beneficial for both students and industry.</p>


Author(s):  
José Luis Sánchez de la Rosa ◽  
Silvia Alayón Miranda ◽  
Carina Soledad González

The importance of the evaluation of the transversal competences in engineering studies is explained in this chapter. Transversal competences are of great importance to enterprises that like to recruit students after their graduation. They look for trained professionals, thoroughly prepared not only to solve practical problems but also to be successfully integrated in a team work. Transversal competences are not directly related to the theoretical content of the curricula, and the assessment of the level of transversal competences developed through the university studies is not an easy task. A methodology for evaluating transversal skills during the Final Year Project (FYP) assessment is proposed. And a new modality of FYP to improve the acquisition of transversal skills is presented.


CJEM ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 20 (S1) ◽  
pp. S104-S105
Author(s):  
A. V. Seto

Introduction: Teamwork skills are essential in emergency presentations. When training medical students to manage acute care cases, simulation is frequently the educational tool. However, simulation content is often medically-focused, and post-simulation debriefs may not prioritize discussion of teamwork skills, as time is limited. Furthermore, debriefing both medical and teamwork aspects of a case may add to the learners cognitive load. This innovation uses an escape game as a non-clinical simulation to gamify teamwork skills training, with a focus on the collaborator CanMEDS role. In the entertainment industry, escape games are activities where teams solve a series of puzzles together to ultimately escape a room. Methods: 2 groups of 5 second-year medical students piloted the escape game, created within a simulation theatre, designed to surface teamwork competencies under the four University of Calgary Team Scheme domains (adapted from CIHCs National Interprofessional Competency Framework and TeamSTEPPS): Leadership/Membership, Communication, Situation Monitoring, and Collaborative Decision-Making/Mutual Support. During the game, facilitators noted examples of students strengths and challenges in demonstrating teamwork competencies. Post-game, a debrief and written reflective exercise enabled students to analyze successes and challenges in demonstrating teamwork competencies, propose solutions to teamwork challenges, and write 3 goals to improve teamwork skills. All competencies listed under each Team Scheme domain represented themes used in a thematic analysis to uncover students reported teamwork challenges. Results: Each escape game is a 30-minute teamwork activity where 5 students collaborate to complete 8 puzzles, which do not require medical knowledge, in order to win. Briefing is scheduled for 15-minutes, whereas post-game debriefing and reflection is 45-minutes. Conclusion: Escape games can highlight strengths and challenges in teamwork and collaboration amongst second-year medical students. Every competency under the Team Scheme domains was highlighted by the escape game pilots, touching on both strengths and challenges, for which students demonstrated, debriefed, and reflected upon. Students self-documented teamwork challenges include issues surrounding task-focused, closed-loop communication, and frequent reassessments. Advantages of this innovation include its use as a learning progression towards acute care simulations, portability and affordability, potential interprofessional use, and customizability. Additional training time may be required to orient facilitators to this atypical simulation. The escape game will launch in MDCN490 for second-year medical students and is scheduled prior to their acute care simulations. Further teamwork challenges identified at that time will help inform teamwork curriculum development for year 3.


Author(s):  
Richard R. Chromik ◽  
Diane Dechief ◽  
Denzel Guye ◽  
Faye Siluk ◽  
Cathryn Somrani

Survey results and student feedback from the initial year of McGill University’s E-IDEA (Engineering Inclusivity, Diversity and Equity Advancement) teamwork initiative demonstrate that undergraduate engineering students value this team-based, applied training in equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI). The course-based training provides a critical foundation from which to build strong teamwork skills. Our findings demonstrate the benefit of initiating teamwork-integrated EDI training early in students’ programs and continuing until final capstone courses.


Author(s):  
Janaka Y. Ruwanpura

At many Canadian universities, there are few courses for design education in the civil engineering curriculum except in fourth year. This paper explains an innovative approach introduced by the author to promote design education using a design competition at the University of Calgary. Through this design competition, third-year students learn design concepts and apply them using a real project, integrate several civil engineering deliverables in one project without doing them in a separate course, and gain experience that prepares them for their final-year design course. The eight courses included in the competition comprise all civil engineering aspects, including structural, geotechnical, transportation, environmental, construction, material, and project management. This inaugural year’s design competition is based on the new Alberta Children’s Hospital Project. The paper discusses the competition’s purpose, structure, student participation, deliverables, and successful outcome.


2008 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
pp. 366-372
Author(s):  
Amy Warncke Lang ◽  
Paulius V. Puzinauskas

To increase the design experience gained by undergraduate engineering students and to enhance their iterative thinking skills needed in the engineering profession, a new project was developed and assigned in the sophomore-level thermodynamics class taught at the University of Alabama. Students designed a mechanism using a toy drinking bird as a heat engine with the goal of minimizing the time required to raise a small weight a given distance. Besides building teamwork and design skills, several key thermodynamic concepts were also visualized for the students, thus increasing their overall comprehension of the course material.


Author(s):  
Robyn Paul ◽  
Gillian Ayers ◽  
Joule Bergerson ◽  
Kerry Black ◽  
Tanya Brucker ◽  
...  

With the continued climate crisis, there is increasing recognition for the important of sustainabilityeducation in engineering. At the University of Calgary, we are developing a program in Sustainable Systems Engineering to address this need. Systems thinking and sustainability are intrinsically linked, as in order to comprehend the wicked challenges of sustainability today, we must take a holistic, interconnected, systems approach. This paper outlines sustainability education literature, and our approach to program development. Overall, we hope to foster mindsets and develop engineering students who are able to fundamentally shift the discourse on sustainability engineering within industry, and critically reflect on the role of engineering itself.


2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 45
Author(s):  
Antonio Márcio Albuquerque Almeida ◽  
Leonardo Pires De Sousa Silva ◽  
Francisco Heitor Vasconcelos ◽  
Rômulo Nunes De Carvalho Almeida

The evolution in the formation of techniques in technological vocational education constitutes a series of pedagogical strategies that allow the learning, exercise, incentive and practice of students. The projects of interdisciplinary in the university aims to assist in learning the individual with the incentive of activities directed for collaborating with students in undergraduate. These projects are important for undergraduate courses in electrical engineering and computing engineering at the Universidade Federal do Ceará (UFC), Sobral campus. With the main objectives of the project is to encourage the student to learn to academic growth. This article presents a case study developed by the project called the cooperative learning cell for the development of android applications, applied in groups of engineering students in the first and second semesters, using recent teaching methods aimed at learning, occurring in the period from September to December 2016. The main objective of the project was to promote the learning and sharing of knowledge about the programming content for mobile devices, aimed at the android operating system. In addition, it seeks to stimulate the student with more interactive content, applying examples and activities related to mobile programming that were related with the content of the engineering course or the labor market. After the group of students was created, nine meetings took place in each of them, the cooperative learning methodology was applied to the group, where the knowledge was generated through the interaction between two or more people, resulting in an active participation of the educational process. The classes were designed with a focus on content exposure, challenges and small projects to solve group tasks. In addition, professionals working in engineering companies in the northern region of Ceará were invited to give lectures to show the current situation of the labor market, focused on mobile applications. Evaluating the result over the course of the project. Keywords: Educational incentive, Cooperation, Engineering Teaching, Android.


Author(s):  
D. D. Mann ◽  
D. S. Petkau ◽  
K. J. Dick ◽  
S. Ingram

Design teams in industry are composed of individuals with diverse backgrounds at various stages of their careers. A unique set of group dynamics will be created with one member, likely someone with sufficient experience, assuming the responsibility of being the team leader. Design teams formed in engineering classes within the university setting typically consist of individuals at the same stage of their academic training, thus students do not experience the same group dynamics as they will find in industry. In an attempt to give undergraduate engineering students this experience, inter-year design teams were formed from engineering students registered in courses representing different stages of completion of the engineering degree. Students registered in the final-year design course were expected to assume the roles of team leaders or coleaders. This paper will discuss a number of issues that were observed with inter-year capstone design teams. It has been concluded that the disadvantages of inter-year design teams outweigh the advantages.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document