Work in Progress: Enhancing Respectful, Equitable Teamwork in a First-Year Design Course
This Work In Progress paper describes the initial implementation of activities aimed to enhance teamwork in a first-year design course. Teamwork plays a central role in the experience of students in many first-year engineering design programs. The first-year design class at Duke University revolves around student teams (typically four or five members) working on aspects of a client-based project. Although most teams in the course function reasonably well, there exist areas for improvement: respectful communication among team members and ensuring that the perspectives and skills of all group members are appropriately valued. Each year, a few groups have problems in these areas, creating a challenging environment particularly for underrepresented engineering students. To combat this issue, a video and activities were developed to emphasize teamwork and inclusion. The video was created by two students who had taken the course in the previous year. It presented background information, mindful teaching about inclusion, some discussion of the students' personal experiences in the course, and an introduction to the activities. The three activities that were developed were (1) a communication game, which allowed students to practice clear and respectful communication, (2) a teamwork and collaboration game, which aimed to show that each member of a team had something valuable to contribute, and (3) a reflection and discussion activity, which aimed to solidify ideas from the previous activities and allow students to reflect on how they could implement these teamwork and inclusion ideas into their teams. Students watched the video shortly after their teams were formed and completed the three activities in class the next week. Surveys completed after this portion of the course indicate that students felt that the video and activities were effective in shaping how they thought about and approached teamwork. Students also noted that addressing the idea of enhancing respectful, equitable teamwork should continue to be a part of the course in the future.
