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An Exploration of Conflict Asymmetry in a First-Year Engineering Design Project Team

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Conference

2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

Portland, Oregon

Publication Date

June 23, 2024

Start Date

June 23, 2024

End Date

July 12, 2024

Conference Session

Design in Engineering Education Division (DEED) - Engineering Design and First-Year Education

Tagged Division

Design in Engineering Education Division (DEED)

Tagged Topic

Diversity

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/46554

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Paper Authors

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Victoria Kerr University of Toronto

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Emily Moore P.Eng. University of Toronto

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Emily Moore is the Director of the Troost Institute for Leadership Education in Engineering (Troost ILead) at the University of Toronto. Emily spent 20 years as a professional engineer, first as an R&D engineer in a Fortune 500 company, and then leading

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biography

Patricia Kristine Sheridan University of Toronto

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Professor Sheridan is an Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream at the Troost Institute for Leadership Education in Engineering (ILead) and the Institute for Transdisciplinary Studies in Engineering Education and Practice (ISTEP) at the University of Toronto. Prof. Sheridan teaches teamwork and leadership in the first-year cornerstone design courses and oversees the integration of teamwork and leadership learning into the upper-year courses. She previously designed an online team-based self- and peer-assessment system that was used in multiple Canadian universities. She has also taught leadership and teamwork courses at Northwestern University, where she is a Leadership Fellow.

Prof. Sheridan holds a BASc and MASc in Mechanical Engineering, and a PhD in Engineering Leadership Education. She has previously worked on large plant-design teams in industry, and on algorithms to develop co-operative multi-agent systems in robotics.

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Abstract

Conflict is an inherent part of collaboration in engineering design teams. Engineering education researchers and practitioners have developed resources to help students understand the types of conflict and various conflict management strategies. Despite this, students continue to struggle to mobilize this knowledge to resolve conflicts within their project teams. One reason for this barrier may be that most previous research and interventions have assumed conflict to be symmetrical across all students involved (i.e. all students perceive the conflict in the same way), which recent work indicates may not be the case [1]. This work aims to better understand the complex processes involved in the perception and management of conflict in student project teams by investigating the (a)symmetrical nature of conflict within student teams and what the implications of this (a)symmetry are on conflict management outcomes. This work will answer the research questions: (1) How do students’ perceptions of conflict experiences converge and diverge from their team members? And (2) What are the consequences of this (mis)alignment for conflict management outcomes? This work employs multiple perspectives research (MPR) to gain a more nuanced and fulsome understanding of the occurrence of conflict within a project team. Data from semi-structured interviews with three students within a first-year project team was collected following the conclusion of the term. Interview data was analyzed using thematic coding and compared and contrasted to determine congruence and divergence of conflict experiences. Results show that both symmetrical and asymmetrical conflicts were present in the project team over the term. Symmetrical conflicts were more likely to be managed effectively than asymmetrical conflicts. This research showcases the complexity of conflict experiences in a student project team and highlights the need for a more nuanced understanding of conflict experiences. Implications for engineering education researchers and practitioners are included.

Kerr, V., & Moore, E., & Sheridan, P. K. (2024, June), An Exploration of Conflict Asymmetry in a First-Year Engineering Design Project Team Paper presented at 2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Portland, Oregon. https://peer.asee.org/46554

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