First-year Undergraduate Engineering Student Beliefs About Teamwork: A Qualitative Analysis.

Abstract

This paper discusses a comparative study of first-year engineering students’ beliefs around design-based teamwork. In this study, survey data was collected from first-year students at a large research-based university in 2014 and compared to those discussed in the present literature. Using qualitative analysis, these descriptive textual responses were used to identify themes that represented specific beliefs. These themes discussed individual accountability, seeing teamwork as a collection of individual work, challenges around team member motivation, and intra-team communication challenges. When compared to the literature, themes regarding teamwork as inefficient due to experiences around unequal divisions of work and perceived skill disparity emerged as reflective of the literature. An underlying value of optimization emerged in our analysis. Tapping into this core value could enable students to develop more effective teamworking strategies.