Abstract:

This paper presents and analyzes the results of an Educational Innovation Project framed within the measurement of teamwork competence among students of Industrial Engineering School at Polytechnic University of Madrid (ETSII-UPM). Teamwork competence was measured in the first year and in the final year to quantify how student’s time at the School strengthens (or not) this competence.

This project is of interest and is justified from three complementary and interconnected points of view: the first is the impact that teamwork has on project success, it has been a concern of researchers in recent years, with the need to train engineers who contribute to achieving better results in engineering projects (Ali et al., 2021; Hoegl et al., 2003; Lindsjørn et al., 2016; Yang et al., 2011); secondly, through the development of a previous European project (in five different countries), the need for companies hiring our graduates to have engineers with this competence more strengthened was identified (Ortiz-Marcos et al., 2020); lastly, from the perspective of ETSII_UPM, this project also provides knowledge and measure the impact that the educational program has on this competence, allowing for measures to be taken to improve it in the desired direction based on the results. These measurements will also help to justify the strengthening of ABET Competency 5 ("an ability to function effectively on a team whose members together provide leadership, create a collaborative and inclusive environment, establish goals, plan tasks, and meet objectives") in the accredited programs.

The measurement has been carried out using the "Team Competency Test (TWCT)," a tool that has already been validated (Aguado et al., 2014). This is a tool for measuring personal competencies. The test consists of 36 items that measure conflict resolution, decision-making, communication, planning and coordination, control and evaluation, and the ability to provide feedback within a team.

The obtained results allow us to understand how students perceive the impact of passing through ETSII on the strengthening of this competence and, if necessary, take appropriate measures to improve it. The measurement has been carried out in Bachelor's in Industrial Technologies.

We have measured during September 2022 and 286 students participated (111 in the first year and 175 in the fourth year). Of these 34.1% are women. Results show that students don’t perceive that they strength teamwork competence during the years they study at University for several variables. They do for “Collaborative problem-solving: Individual” (identifying situations that require participation in decision-making), this is the unique variable with higher results in the fourth than in the first course. For “Collaborative problem-solving: group”, “Communication: active listening” and “Performance objective management: feedback” results are similar in both courses. For the rest of variables, students perceive that the performance is worse. Reflections about reasons and corrective actions are shared in this paper.

Keywords:

Teamwork, Engineering Education, competences.