GIFTS: Assessing Teamwork and Design Habits in a First-Year Engineering Design Course
- Conference
- Location
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Portland, Oregon
- Publication Date
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June 23, 2024
- Start Date
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June 23, 2024
- End Date
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July 12, 2024
- Conference Session
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First-Year Programs Division GIFTS: Great Ideas For Teaching Students
- Tagged Division
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First-Year Programs Division (FYP)
- Permanent URL
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https://peer.asee.org/47498
Paper Authors
Catherine Marie Hamel University of Maryland
Catherine "Cara" Hamel is a senior lecturer and the Assistant Director of the Keystone Program at the University of Maryland. Within this role, Catherine focuses on effectively teaching fundamental engineering courses for first and second year students, teaching courses like Thermodynamics, Statics, Introduction to Engineering Design, and Women in Engineering 1st-Year Seminar. Previously, Catherine received a bachelor's and master's degree in Fire Protection Engineering and worked as a process safety consultant before returning to UMD to teach for Keystone.
Jackelyn Raquel Lopez Roshwalb University of Maryland
Jackelyn believes that all students deserve excellent, accessible learning experiences, and she strives to make that a reality in her role as a learning experience designer at the Teaching & Learning Transformation Center (TLTC) at the University of Maryland (UMD).
Jackelyn earned a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering with minors in Spanish and Mathematics from UMD. Part way through her college experience, Jackelyn decided that she wanted to go into teaching, so she followed-up her undergraduate studies by earning an M.A.T. in Mathematics Secondary Education from Johns Hopkins University. Jackelyn taught high school math and physics for several years before returning to UMD as a professional track faculty member in the Clark School of Engineering, where she taught for nearly a decade. Jackelyn draws on those teaching experiences in her role at the TLTC to support faculty through one-on-one consultations, leading workshops, facilitating learning communities, and designing online faculty development experiences.
Kevin Calabro University of Maryland
Kevin Calabro is Keystone Instructor, Principal Lecturer, and Director in the Clark School of Engineering at the University of Maryland.
Abstract
In this Great Ideas for Teaching Students (GIFTS) Paper we present the motivation, background, evolution of development, and practical implementation details of a “team performance and design habit rubric” in a first-year engineering design course (ENES100) at the University of Maryland (UMD).
Every engineering student at UMD takes ENES100 during their time as an undergraduate engineering student, and students are tasked with working in a multidisciplinary team of eight (8) students to design and build an autonomous vehicle that can complete a prescribed mission. The learning objectives of the course include applying modeling techniques in engineering design, creating prototypes of the design, troubleshooting and iteration of design, teamwork and communication, and project management. Thus, in addition to developing the essential skills for engineering design practices, key objectives of ENES100 include building the skills to work equitably on a team, developing a growth mindset, and encouraging reflection both on the team’s designs and the team’s operation.
Out of these learning outcomes grew a need for a tangible way of assessing the team’s operational performance and design habits. To address these needs, the team of instructors for ENES100 developed and implemented a “Team Performance Rubric” that provides multiple performance criteria, a rating scale, and performance indicators relevant to team habits and design habits.
Although there are many tools and software that are available for assessing the performance of a team and gathering peer evaluations [1], a novel aspect of the rubric is a reflective and responsive approach for assessing design practices within the team. A rubric for rating a team’s design habits like “calibration and testing,” “well-constructed prototype,” "effective use of modeling techniques,” “design iteration,” and “integration planning and implementation” was developed for use in assessment. The rubric for design habits and team practices drew inspiration from existing literature [2] and available tools [1]. Additionally, the rubric aims to assess the entire team’s effectiveness, rather than the contributions of an individual member of the team. As such, rubric items and performance indicators were developed to assess “equitable teamwork”, “productive discourse”, “communication tools and techniques”, and “failure, resilience and learning from setbacks.”
This GIFTS paper introduces the Team Performance Rubric developed by the authors and offers an overview of its strengths and limitations, as assessed by the instruction team of ENES100.
[1] M.L. Loughry, M.W. Ohland, D.D. Moore, “Development of a Theory-Based Assessment of Team Member Effectiveness,” Educational and Psychological Measurement, vol. 67, no. 3, pp. 505-524, June 2007. [2] D. P. Crismond and R.S. Adams, “The informed design teaching & learning matrix,” Journal of Engineering Education-Washington, vol. 101, no.4, pp. 738-797, Oct. 2012.
Hamel, C. M., & Lopez Roshwalb, J. R., & Calabro, K. (2024, June), GIFTS: Assessing Teamwork and Design Habits in a First-Year Engineering Design Course Paper presented at 2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Portland, Oregon. https://peer.asee.org/47498
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