Students’ Teamwork Assessment based on Reflection, Peer Evaluations and Psychological Safety

Abstract Engineering projects involve a variety of stakeholders: some work in the engineering disciplines while others do not. Engineering projects entail complex technical facets and can face challenges due to scheduling, budget constraints, conflicting viewpoints, or performance issues. To prepare engineering students for real-world projects, faculty assign students to group projects for them to learn how to work in a collaborative and inclusive environment. However, there are varying levels of commitment as well as knowledge and skills regarding effective teamwork among students assigned to a team. To address this disparity, the faculty at University X developed a confidential peer-evaluation metric to assess each student's performance in group projects in Spring and Fall 2020 in a variety of civil engineering courses. The metric requires that each student evaluate themselves and their teammates on the following criteria: leadership, collaboration and inclusivity, responsibility, work quality, meeting deadlines, and level of contribution toward overall project goals. At the first of each semester, students share their ideas about each criterion in an online discussion board where faculty review their posts and provide tailored instruction to each team to improve any knowledge gaps in teamwork and leadership. At the completion of a group project, students evaluate their teams' performance in each criterion using a likert scale as well as open response items which are then coded and analyzed. Each student's evaluation and their academic performance (i.e., their course grade) is analyzed and summarized. Outcomes from this study show the effectiveness of the leadership and teamwork intervention to improve student performance in teams. The team performance is observed in the confidential peer-evaluation which also provides faculty with data they can use to implement changes to improve the tailored interventions and also improve engagement on team projects. The expected results allow students in these courses to develop "close the loop" strategies that enhance students' skillsets for success in collaborative and inclusive environments.