DHC Faculty Handbook

Research and Examples From the Professional World Demonstrate the Effectiveness and Necessity of Student Teams

Teams are being used everywhere to solve problems, design products and increase learning. This page provides you with a list of sources from both the academic and professional world that support the theory that teams are nessecary and that it is part of the university's job to prepare students to be successful team members and team leaders.

I. This is a day in the life of a UCD graduate working at Applied Materials that appeared on the Applied Web site in April 1999.: "My first contact with Applied Materials occurred at a job fair at the University of California, Davis where I was completing my MS in mechanical engineering. Although I had heard of the company, I knew little about it or the industry it had helped create-semiconductor wafer processing systems and services. The six-month SGT Program provided an outstanding transition from academia to the work force. It consisted of 275 hours of technical and professional development training, a ten-week, on-site assignment and a three-week field assignment. The training ranged from a hands-on semiconductor fabrication course to one that fostered team building on a "ropes course" in the Santa Cruz Mountains."

II. Interaction Associates Client Stories: Interaction Associates is a management consulting firm that works with Fortune 500 companies helping supervisors and employee become proficient in creating action plans, designing collaborative processes, managing group problem-solving sessions, building agreements and resolving conflict. You can read about how firms they work with use teams to solve problems at their Web site. They also have an extensive list of clients on their Web site.

III. Business Week Magazine article on "Creating the New University: A Tough Market Is Reshaping Colleges;" http://204.151.55.46/1997/51/b3558139.htm (April, 1999): "They (universities) are designing curriculums more relevant to employers, communities, and students. Schools are pursuing fiscal discipline, forcing accountability on organizations that for decades have expanded as they pleased. And they're wiring the ivory towers, creating with technology more efficient mediums of instruction."; " Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute just adopted a first-year ''studio course,'' rooted in curricular and physical redesign, meant to set RPI apart in the marketplace. In new multi-use rooms, built for $100,000 to $150,000 apiece, students face one way to hear a professor's short lecture, swivel around to work on lab equipment or personal-computer programs set up to complement the lesson, then turn again to work in small groups."; "In an introductory class in circuits, Professor William C. Jennings begins with a short discourse on amplification. Then he turns his 30 students loose to wire and test the equipment behind them, roaming the room to give guidance as needed. Before last year, he lectured for an hour and a half, and students went elsewhere to experiment under a grad student. Students like the merger of two settings. ''You don't really know what's going on until you do it yourself,'' says Melissa Postolowski."

IV. "CORE ABILITIES" Source: Based on Core Abilities: Bringing the Mission to the Classroom by Judith Neill, Project Director for the Wisconsin Instructional Design System. This article summarizes study done to identify what companies are looking for.

V. Cooperative Learning: Meta-Analysis: Springer, L., Stanne, M.E. , and Donovan, S. 1997. Effects of small-group learning on undergraduates in science, mathematics, engineering, and technology: A meta-analysis. Madison, WI: National Institute for Science Education.

Literature search on studies of small group learning in post-secondary science, mathematics, engineering and technology (SMET) produced 383 reports from 1980. Thirty-nine of those reports were reviewed in the meta-analysis. The studies showed that small-groups had significant and positive effects on student achievement, persistence, and attitudes.

For example, the effect on small group learning on achievement reported in this article would move a student from the 50th percentile to the 70th on a standardized test. The same would be true of the effect of small-groups on students' persistence. At the rate shown in the study, SMET courses would reduce their attrition by 22%.

VI. Reinventing Undergraduate Education: A Blue Print for America's Research Universities

The Boyer Commission on Educating Undergraduates in the Research Universities, April 1998

Ten Ways To Change Undegraduate Education

Make research-based learning standard
Construct an inquiry-based freshman year
Build on the freshman foundation
Remove barriers to interdisciplinary education
Link communication skills to course work
Use information technology creatively
Culminate with a capstone experience
Educate graduate students as apprentice teachers
Change faculty reward systems
Cultivate an sense of community

<http://notes.cc.sunysb.edu/Pres/boyer.nsf/webform/contents> (April, 1999)

VII. Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology, Inc.

Criterion 3. Program Outcomes and Assessment

Engineering programs must demonstrate that their graduates have

(a) an ability to apply knowledge of mathematics, science and engineering

(b) an ability to design and conduct experiments as well as analyze and interpret data

(d) an ability to function in muti-disciplinary teams

(e) an ability to identify, formulate, and solve engineering problems

(f) an understanding of professional and ethical responsibility

(g) an ability to communicate effectively

(h) the broad education to understand the impact of engineering solutions in a global and societal context

(i) a recognition of the need for, and an ability to engage in life-long learning

(j) a knowledge of contemporary issues

(k) an ability to use the techniques, skills, and modern engineering tools necessary for engineering practice

<http://www.abet.org/abethomepage.html> (April, 1999)

VIII. Shaping the Future: New Expectations for Undergraduate Education in Science, Mathematics Engineering and Technology

Goal - All students have access to supportive, excellent undergraduate education in Science, Mathematics, Engineering, and Technology (SMET) and all students learn these subjects by direct experience with the methods and processes of inquiry.

Recommend by SMET faculty: Believe and affirm that every student can learn, and model good practices that increase learning; starting with the student's experience, but have high expectations with a supportive climate; and build inquiry, a sense of wonder and the excitement of discovery, plus communication and team work, critical thinking, and life-long learning skills into learning experiences.