Developing Teamwork Skills Among first Year Chemical Engineering Students Using Cooperative Problem-based Learning in “introduction to Engineering” Course

Abstract

This study was conducted to investigate the development of teamwork skills among first year chemical engineering students using Cooperative Problem-Based Learning in “Introduction to Engineering” course. A pre and post-test questionnaire using Team Assessment Tool (TAT) established by Moore and colleagues was administered to 52 first-year chemical engineering undergraduates. This instrument is useful to measure individuals’ rate on team’s performance using 24 Likert-scale items. The main constructs for this instrument consist of interdependency, potency, goal-setting and learning. The descriptive analysis provides the mean, standard deviation and frequency to see the significance of the pre and post-test results. The paired sample t- test was used to determine the significant differences of teamwork level between at the beginning and end of the course. The results from paired sample t-test shows that there was significant increment (p < 0.05) for teamwork in its constructs like interdependency, potency, goal-setting and learning. This shows that the students have developed teamwork skills after undergoing the “Introduction to Engineering” course.