Engineering students spend a significant portion of their education working in teams, but simply putting students together on a project does not necessarily teach them how to become better teammates.

A new National Science Foundation grant awarded to Alexandra Werth, assistant professor in the Meinig School of Biomedical Engineering at the Cornell Duffield College of Engineering, aims to develop a more systematic approach to teaching teamwork by helping instructors identify what they want students to learn from team experiences – and then match those objectives with effective teaching practices.

The three-year, $499,999 project, “Developing a Framework for Enhancing Pedagogical Practices for Teamwork in Undergraduate Engineering Education,” will draw from research in education, organizational management and engineering education to create a framework that categorizes different teamwork learning objectives and connects them with appropriate pedagogical strategies.

Teamwork is particularly important in engineering, Werth said, where it is both an accreditation requirement and a skill consistently valued by employers.

“When you go out into the workforce and talk to future employees of Cornell students – what skills do you wish that our students have? – it’s often these interpersonal skills that come up at the top,” said Werth, who is also a member of the Duffield Engineering Education Research Institute. “They are skills that can be learned and developed.”

The challenge, according to Werth, is that educators and researchers have often focused on whether a student team functions effectively rather than whether individual students are actually developing teamwork skills.

Those goals are not necessarily the same.

Werth’s previous research, for example, has found that teams experiencing conflict can provide opportunities for students to develop conflict-management skills. A team that runs smoothly may produce a successful project, but students may have fewer opportunities to practice resolving disagreements.

“Team effectiveness is not team skill development,” Werth said. “You don’t get to practice these things unless you have some sort of conflict, and also instruction and tools from the faculty to help you work though the conflict.”

The project will begin with a systematic review of literature from several fields. Education researchers have extensively studied collaboration and collaborative learning, while organizational-management researchers have examined how teams function effectively in workplaces. Engineering education has generated its own body of research.

Werth and her team will compare findings across those fields, looking for areas where recommendations agree, conflict or depend on particular circumstances. They will then develop a framework and interview engineering instructors nationally to determine how well it reflects the realities of the classroom.

One problem, Werth said, is the tendency to search for a single “best practice” for forming and teaching teams when the appropriate strategy may depend on what an instructor wants students to accomplish.

“The reality is that it’s context dependent, and that there isn’t, unfortunately, one best practice for everyone,” Werth said.

For example, an instructor might group students with different levels of programming ability when the goal is for students to develop coding skills collaboratively and learn from one another. But if coding is simply a tool for completing a larger engineering project, teams of students with similar skill levels may be more effective, ensuring that no one is left behind. Students could then gain experience collaborating with peers who bring different strengths and abilities to other aspects of the project.

Clarifying those distinctions is central to the new research. A national survey conducted by Werth and collaborators asked more than 100 faculty members to identify their objectives for assigning teamwork. They came up with a long list, but some of their objectives conflict with others, meaning instructors may need to identify which outcomes matter most for a particular assignment or course.

Ultimately, the project could produce an online resource that allows instructors to identify the characteristics and learning objectives of their courses and find research and teaching strategies relevant to those circumstances.

The project summary describes the goal as moving away from a “one-size-fits-all” approach to teamwork education and toward a framework that treats teamwork as a spectrum of distinct learning objectives, while giving faculty practical tools for incorporating those objectives into their curricula.

Werth expects the initial literature review to take about a year, with faculty interviews beginning as preliminary findings and frameworks emerge. The researchers hope to produce several publications during the three-year project while also developing resources that instructors can use in their classrooms.

The broader goal is to ensure that teamwork in engineering courses becomes more than simply a way to complete an assignment.

By helping instructors deliberately connect team experiences with specific skills – such as managing conflict, giving and receiving feedback, and collaborating with people who bring different expertise – Werth hopes the research can better prepare students for the collaborative nature of engineering practice.