Title: Engineering students' perceptions of team conflict and high-performance teams

Authors: Xaver Neumeyer; Ann F. McKenna

Addresses: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Northwestern University, 2145 Sheridan Road, Evanston, IL 60201, USA ' Department of Engineering, Arizona State University, 7171 E Sonoran Arroyo Mall Peralta 330B, Tempe, AZ 85281, USA

Abstract: Our study investigates the role of team conflict in the context of student design project work. We are interested in how students experience conflicts in a team environment and how these conflicts relate to other aspects of teamwork such as communication, division of work, shared goals, and leadership. We are using a mixed-method approach to data collection through peer-review data, team observations, and reflective memos. This paper reports results from a study implemented in a required first-year engineering design course. The majority of participants recognise the benefits that task and procedural conflicts have on team performance. Specifically, teamwork aspects such as communication, open-mindedness, and working towards a common goal were connected to cognitive conflict. The peer-review data illustrates that some class sections showed statistically significant improvements in goal commitment, idea communication during conflicts, conflict engagement and attentive listening over time. The results of the post-hoc tests further suggest that students in teams with a predominantly male composition (three males and one female) reported a statistically significant decrease in goal commitment and attentive listening during the ten-week evaluation period. Finally, methodologically we found that the reflective memos and team observations were better instruments for capturing team conflict, more so than peer-review surveys.

Keywords: team conflict; productive conflict; engineering design education; peer evaluation; cooperative learning; engineering students; student perceptions; high-performance teams; engineering education; higher education; design projects; teamwork; communication; division of work; shared goals; leadership; team performance; gender.

DOI: 10.1504/IJCE.2014.063351

International Journal of Collaborative Engineering, 2014 Vol.1 No.3/4, pp.274 - 297

Accepted: 20 Aug 2013
Published online: 29 Jul 2014 *

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