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Work-in-Progress: Do International Peers Boost Team-Based Learning Effectiveness in Undergraduate Engineering Education?

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Conference

2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

Minneapolis, MN

Publication Date

August 23, 2022

Start Date

June 26, 2022

End Date

June 29, 2022

Conference Session

ERM: Teamwork makes the dream work!

Page Count

9

DOI

10.18260/1-2--40963

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/40963

Download Count

246

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Paper Authors

biography

Li Tan Purdue University at West Lafayette (COE)

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Li Tan is a visiting assistant professor at Purdue University in Engineering Education. His research centers on understanding pathways to academic success for students of all demographic and socioeconomic backgrounds with a focus on postsecondary success in engineering fields.

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biography

Siqing Wei Purdue University at West Lafayette (COE)

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Siqing Wei received B.S. and M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Purdue University. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. degree in Engineering Education program at Purdue University. After years of experience serving as a peer teacher and a graduate teaching assistant in first-year engineering courses, he has been a research assistant at CATME research group studying multicultural team dynamics and outcomes. The research interests span how cultural diversity impacts teamwork and how to help students improve intercultural competency and teamwork competency by interventions, counseling, pedagogy, and tool selection (such as how to use CATME Team-Maker to form inclusive and diversified teams) to promote DEI. In addition, he also works on many research-to-practice projects to enhance educational technology usage in engineering classrooms and educational research by various methods, such as natural language processing. In addition, he is also interested in the learning experiences of international students. Siqing also works as the technical development and support manager at the CATME research group.

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Matthew Ohland Purdue University at West Lafayette (COE)

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Matthew W. Ohland is Associate Head and the Dale and Suzi Gallagher of Professor of Engineering Education at Purdue University. He has degrees from Swarthmore College, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and the University of Florida. He studies the longitudinal study of engineering students and forming and managing student teams and with collaborators has been recognized for the best paper published in the Journal of Engineering Education in 2008, 2011, and 2019 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.

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Abstract

Existing studies have underscored the importance of undergraduate student team learning in engineering education. For example, team-based learning approaches usually effectuate more favorable student learning outcomes and learning behaviors. However, there is much less evidence from the literature on how the team composition affects the learning effectiveness of student teams. In this project, we leverage first-year engineering student team data at a large, Midwestern university to evaluate the effects of team cultural compositions on team effectiveness. We define a group to be culturally diverse if the team consists of students born in different countries. First-year engineering students at this university are nominally assigned into 4-person learning groups at the beginning of the first semester using the CATME system. Within each learning group, students provide self- and peer-evaluations of each other at four different points during the semesters studied. Given the purpose of our study, we use a regression model structured to isolate variation based on the unique assignment of students to groups for identification. Eventually, we examine the effects of mixed culture team compositions on self- and peer-ratings to address our research question. Our preliminary results highlight the potential benefits of enrolling students from different countries of origin into the same learning group, in terms of boosting self- and peer-ratings. Results from our study have the potential to shed light on an effective strategy using student learning teams to facilitate team collaboration.

Tan, L., & Wei, S., & Ohland, M. (2022, August), Work-in-Progress: Do International Peers Boost Team-Based Learning Effectiveness in Undergraduate Engineering Education? Paper presented at 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Minneapolis, MN. 10.18260/1-2--40963

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