BELBIN TEAM ROLES THEORY AS ENGINEERING STUDENT GROUPING STRATEGY. INFLUENCE WORKING ON FLUID MECHANICS: LABORATORY AND PROJECT BASED LEARNING ACTIVITIES

Group learning mechanisms are often used in engineering degrees at university level and many research studies have concluded benefits when using Collaborative Learning (CL) in most of the cases. In the present work, we bring a group formation strategy that has been widely used around the world in many companies and organizations in order to improve results of working groups. It is based on the Belbin’s Team-Roles Theory, introduced by M. Belbin on 1981, which sets main 9 different roles that human being can play working as a team. Then, after analyzing each member behavior as a team worker, makes the group composition so that the team is compensated in all its roles.

The presented Belbin group formation strategy has been applied in the Fluid Mechanics course (2nd year), in a class group formed by 86 students from four mixed different Engineering Degrees (Mechanical, Electric, Electronics and Chemical). From among all students of this class, 31 formed their working groups by the Belbin method, rest were self-organized. Working Groups were used in two kind of activities: Laboratory Practice sessions and a Project Based Learning (PBL) activity. Laboratory accounts for the 20% of the final mark and the PBL activity for the 10%. Conclusions are presented by comparison between both group formation strategies at both activities.