Abstract:

Engineering juniors at the American University of Sharjah work in multidisciplinary teams in a required course which aims to develop professional communication skills. The teams are formed in compliance with the following requirements; teams must be comprised of three or four students and each team must contain students from at least three different engineering major disciplines. The requirements are to ensure multi-disciplinary project and teamwork. Students engage in team-building informed by the administration of the Belbin® Get-Set Self Perception Inventory (SPI) used to provide both individual and team profile preferences of the nine roles deemed by Belbin as essential for well-functioning teams. Use of this instrument is intended to raise students’ awareness of the characteristics of team-role behavior and assist them to develop their capacities to work together in coordinated, interdependent ways. The Belbin® resources are helpful and valued by students and faculty, but they do not help students deal with the problem behaviors that the teams encounter. As a population our engineering juniors include individuals who exhibit the full range of difficult, obstructive conduct which is counter-productive to effective teamwork. We address the issue by identifying helpful strategies to modify behavior by the use of Video Arts Managing Problem People Series. In this series six problem types are featured and twelve to nineteen minute scenarios are enacted with the outcomes being to develop understanding of how to maximize individual potential and effect positive change. A common factor that runs through all the programs is that change is two-pronged; change of leadership behavior can cause a positive change in individual behavior. Despite this, uneven team role behavior and inability to adapt to the pro-activity required by the practices of effective teams are strong challenges to many of our students. In some cases deficit team behavior is difficult to overcome and at worst team members remain incapable of change maturation. In other cases an individual’s progress and achievement is negatively affected by the deficit behaviors of the majority. These issues have been the focus of a collaborative process of repair strategies developed by teaching faculty to assist student teams and individual team members to build effective and productive behaviors. In the paper I will outline a number of the strategies developed and report on their perceived effectiveness as reported by faculty and students.

Keywords:

Multidisciplinary, team-role behavior, repair strategies, deficit behaviors, pro-activity.