Asee peer logo

Psychological Safety as an Effective Measurement in Engineering Classrooms

Download Paper |

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 10: Understanding Student Experiences

Tagged Division

Educational Research and Methods

Page Count

10

DOI

10.18260/1-2--33214

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/33214

Download Count

1138

Request a correction

Paper Authors

biography

Behzad Beigpourian Purdue University

visit author page

Behzad Beigpourian is a Ph.D. student and Research Assistant in Engineering Education at Purdue University. He earned his master’s in Structural Engineering from Shahid Chamran University in Iran, and his bachelor’s in Civil Technical Teacher from Shahid Rajaee Teacher Training University in Iran, Tehran. He has been official Technical Teacher at Ministry of Education in Iran from 2007 to 2018, and received many certificate in education such as Educational Planning, Developing Research Report, and Understanding School Culture. During these years, he has taught construction courses in several technical schools. Mr. Beigpourian currently works in the CATME project, which is NSF funding project, on optimizing teamwork skills and assessing the quality of Peer Evaluations.

visit author page

biography

Frank Luchini

visit author page

Frank Luchini has five years experience in industry working as a Process/Design/Project Engineer. He recently returned to academia to earn a PhD in Engineering Education at Purdue University. He will be completing a Master in Engineering Education in May and starting as a Assistant Professor at Trine University in August 2019. He earned a BS in Mechanical Engineering and a BA in Arts and Humanities from Michigan State University.

visit author page

biography

Matthew W. Ohland Purdue University, West Lafayette Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0003-4052-1452

visit author page

Matthew W. Ohland is Professor of Engineering Education at Purdue University. He has degrees from Swarthmore College, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and the University of Florida. His research on the longitudinal study of engineering students, team assignment, peer evaluation, and active and collaborative teaching methods has been supported by the National Science Foundation and the Sloan Foundation and his team received Best Paper awards from the Journal of Engineering Education in 2008 and 2011 and from the IEEE Transactions on Education in 2011 and 2015. Dr. Ohland is an ABET Program Evaluator for ASEE. He was the 2002–2006 President of Tau Beta Pi and is a Fellow of the ASEE, IEEE, and AAAS.

visit author page

biography

Daniel M. Ferguson Purdue University, West Lafayette

visit author page

Daniel M. Ferguson is CATME Managing Director and the recipient of several NSF awards for research in engineering education and a research associate at Purdue University. Prior to coming to Purdue he was Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship at Ohio Northern University. Before assuming that position he was Associate Director of the Inter-Professional Studies Program [IPRO] and Senior Lecturer at Illinois Institute of Technology and involved in research in service learning, assessment processes and interventions aimed at improving learning objective attainment. Prior to his University assignments he was the Founder and CEO of The EDI Group, Ltd. and The EDI Group Canada, Ltd, independent professional services companies specializing in B2B electronic commerce and electronic data interchange. The EDI Group companies conducted syndicated market research, offered educational seminars and conferences and published The Journal of Electronic Commerce. He was also a Vice President at the First National Bank of Chicago [now J.P. Morgan Chase], where he founded and managed the bank’s market leading professional Cash Management Consulting Group, initiated the bank’s non-credit service product management organization and profit center profitability programs and was instrumental in the breakthrough EDI/EFT payment system implemented by General Motors. Dr. Ferguson is a graduate of Notre Dame, Stanford and Purdue Universities, a special edition editor of the Journal of Engineering Entrepreneurship and a member of Tau Beta Pi.

visit author page

Download Paper |

Abstract

This research full paper investigates that to what extent the psychological safety can predict conflict and cohesion in teams. Background The primary goal for engineering instructors after forming teams is increasing the effectiveness of teamwork. They want all students participate in the projects, learn from the project, and bring their idea into teams. This effectiveness depends on team dynamics. Whereas faculty have used several team outcomes to monitor team dynamics, psychological safety appears to be a useful but underused measurement. Purpose/Hypothesis This study measured the relationship between psychological safety and other teamwork outcomes such as team’s conflict, and the team's cohesion. If they are related, psychological safety can be used as an early warning of team dysfunction. Design/Method We used simple linear regression to find out to what extent the conflict and cohesion can be explained by psychological safety. We conducted two set of simple linear regressions. The first regression was related to the individual’s scores and the second regression was for team’s average scores. Results Psychological safety significantly predicted conflict and cohesion both in individual-level and team-level. Feeling more psychological safety significantly increase cohesion and decrease the conflict. Conclusions Psychological safety is a very promising measure of team dynamics, and we suggest using it to identify dysfunctional teams with low cohesion and high conflict.

Beigpourian, B., & Luchini, F., & Ohland, M. W., & Ferguson, D. M. (2019, June), Psychological Safety as an Effective Measurement in Engineering Classrooms Paper presented at 2019 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition , Tampa, Florida. 10.18260/1-2--33214

ASEE holds the copyright on this document. It may be read by the public free of charge. Authors may archive their work on personal websites or in institutional repositories with the following citation: © 2019 American Society for Engineering Education. Other scholars may excerpt or quote from these materials with the same citation. When excerpting or quoting from Conference Proceedings, authors should, in addition to noting the ASEE copyright, list all the original authors and their institutions and name the host city of the conference. - Last updated April 1, 2015