Abstract A year-long, four-semester survey was conducted of 2,186 engineering and computer science students involving the use of teamwork in their classes. Several factors were found to increase student satisfaction with their experience, including receiving guidance from the instructor about how to conduct teamwork and having the ability to keep uncooperative students from getting credit for assignments and to fire them as a last resort.

Introduction Research studies on teamwork are often geared towards determining whether teamwork is effective in helping student learn, or what appears to make teams more effective. Only a few relatively small scale studies have attempted to determine what aspects of teamwork and teaching teamwork appear to be most important or useful from a student perspective. This study was designed to establish conditions that promote student satisfaction in team assignments.

Methods Over the course of one academic year (Winter, Spring, Summer, and Fall semesters, 2004), 3,337 engineering student respondents were surveyed about teamwork activities in their classrooms at Oakland University. Oakland is a Midwestern public university with approximately 17,000 students, 1,800 of whom are enrolled in engineering and computer science programs. The eight survey questions shown in Table 1 were asked of all students who participated in the voluntary on-line course/instructor evaluation system used to monitor all engineering classes at Oakland. (Although filling out the evaluation at the end of each course is voluntary, all students are strongly encouraged to participate, and approximately 60% of students do so.) Over the year-long period, 235 courses were evaluated in the fourteen-week fall and winter semesters and the seven-week spring and summer semesters. Because many students enroll in three to four courses during a semester, some engineering students may have responded to the survey several times in each semester—once for each of their courses.

Results

Conclusions The ability to omit the names of uncooperative team members from assignments and to fire them as a last resort appeared to have the strongest association with student satisfaction of all the factors which are directly under an instructor’s control. If these options are offered, the procedures that the students must follow to exercise them should be carefully spelled out at the beginning of the course. Guidance from the instructor on effective teamwork had a significant effect on promoting student satisfaction with their team experience.