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Engineering Students’ Self-Reflections, Teamwork Behaviors, and Academic Performance

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Conference

2019 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

Tampa, Florida

Publication Date

June 15, 2019

Start Date

June 15, 2019

End Date

June 19, 2019

Conference Session

ERM Technical Session 3: Working in Teams

Tagged Division

Educational Research and Methods

Page Count

15

DOI

10.18260/1-2--32738

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/32738

Download Count

635

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Paper Authors

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Saira Anwar Purdue University, West Lafayette Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0001-6947-3226

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Saira Anwar is a third-year doctoral student at School of Engineering Education, Purdue University. She is interested in exploring the effects of using technology to enhance students' learning. Further, she is interested in understanding the ways and interventions that can be designed to deal with conceptually hard concepts in STEM courses especially programming and software engineering courses. Prior to Purdue University, Saira worked as Assistant Professor in Computer Science Department at Forman Christian College (A Chartered University) at Pakistan for eight years and was recognized for outstanding teaching with the year 2013 teaching award. Saira was also the recipient of "President of Pakistan Merit and Talent Scholarship" for her undergraduate studies.

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Muhsin Menekse Purdue University, West Lafayette

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Muhsin Menekse is an assistant professor at Purdue University with a joint appointment in the School of Engineering Education and the Department of Curriculum & Instruction. Dr. Menekse’s primary research focus is on students' learning of complex tasks and concepts in STEM domains. Specifically, he investigates how classroom activities and learning environments affect engagement and learning in engineering and science domains. His second research focus in on exploring verbal interactions in small groups and student teams. And his third research focus is on metacognition and its implications for learning. Much of this research focuses on learning processes in classroom settings. Dr. Menekse is the recipient of the 2014 William Elgin Wickenden Award by the American Society for Engineering Education. His research has been generously funded by grants from the Institute of Education Sciences (IES), Purdue Research Foundation (PRF), and National Science Foundation (NSF).

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Asefeh Kardgar Purdue University, West Lafayette

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Asefeh Kardgar is currently a PhD student in Technology at Purdue University, West Lafayette.

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Abstract

Prior studies in engineering education emphasize the importance of using effective teaching strategies to enhance students’ academic performances. These strategies help engineering educators in multiple ways, including creating a stimulating learning environment, actively involving students in the learning process, enhancing students’ engagement, and improving students’ learning. Two effective strategies include utilizing collaborative teamwork and providing opportunities for students to reflect on their learning experiences. We simultaneously introduced these two strategies in an engineering class of 120 students to explore the relationship between engineering students’ self-reflection, teamwork, and academic performance. The data were collected using two specific technology tools. We used CourseMIRROR [1]–[3] to collect students’ reflection data, and CATME Smarter Teamwork [4]–[6] to collect students’ peer evaluation of team membership. CourseMIRROR was used in 26 lectures to collect students’ reflection data, and we collected a total of 3430 student reflections (~60% completion). The reflection data comprised of two aspects: 1) muddiest point (MP) which describes the confusing aspect of the lecture, and 2) point of interest (POI) which relates to interesting aspects of the given lecture. Additionally, CATME based data was collected from five dimensions: contributing to the team’s work; interacting with teammates; keeping the team on track; expecting quality, and having relevant knowledge skills and abilities. The CATME team membership survey was conducted four times during the semester. We further collected data on students’ academic performances based on three exams. We also collected students’ race and gender information (i.e., as demographic information). Specifically, we explored the unique contribution of two learning strategies (i.e., teamwork and self-reflection) to predict students’ academic performances after controlling for demographic variables. We used stepwise hierarchical and simultaneous hierarchical regression analyses to explore the unique contribution of each strategy over and above the other. The results indicated that teamwork performance is a strong and positive predictor of engineering students’ performance in their course exams. The study also discusses the implications and future directions of the research.

Anwar, S., & Menekse, M., & Kardgar, A. (2019, June), Engineering Students’ Self-Reflections, Teamwork Behaviors, and Academic Performance Paper presented at 2019 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition , Tampa, Florida. 10.18260/1-2--32738

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