Work in progress — Match or mismatch? the teaching and learning of teamwork and communication skills

Abstract

Communication and teamwork skills remain top-priority outcomes for engineering graduates. Yet researchers and educators alike know comparatively little about the teaching and learning epistemologies engineering faculty employ, or about how faculty epistemologies affect the learning mechanisms of engineering students. Our research seeks to address this gap by first examining student and faculty beliefs about effective practice and transferable learning outcomes with respect to communication and teamwork, and then by developing and testing interventions to enhance the teaching and learning of these important skills. The overall study uses a mixed methods approach including interviews and focus groups with faculty and students, followed by surveys of a broader audience, and finally both qualitative and quantitative assessments of the interventions. Preliminary results from the first phase of the project indeed show a gap between faculty and student beliefs about the teaching and learning of teamwork and communication skills in engineering.