Submitting Campus

Prescott

Department

Aerospace Engineering

Document Type

Article

Publication/Presentation Date

2010

Abstract/Description

This paper describes the organization of student teams in engineering courses developed over several years of the author’s experience at multiple institutions. Students are assigned into groups of 3-4 students each for working on the homework. Homework problems are selected from a source other than the assigned textbook, since it has been found that as many as one-third of the students have access to the solution manual. All students in a group receive the same grade on the homework, and only turn in one copy of the assignment for the group. In order to help insure the full participation of all members of the group, on the day the homework is due, a quiz is given in class, in which one of the problems from the homework is randomly selected for the quiz problem, without any change to the problem. Selection of the students on teams follows best practices of grouping students from under-represented groups together. After that, students are grouped based on common interests gleaned from a survey given on the first day of class. In the group projects students are allowed to set their own responsibilities within the team. Typically one person will be in charge of the team budget, one person will conduct experimental testing, one person will be responsible for numerical modeling, etc. For the group projects each team is given an allocation of “Monopoly Money” that they use for purchasing supplies and paying for faculty and staff time to help them on their projects. At the end of the semester group project students give an evaluation of the performance of their teammates. Surveys were also given to students to assess the effectiveness of the team homework in helping them learn the material relative to working alone.

Publication Title

ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Publisher

American Society for Engineering Education

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