A Case Study of the Effects of Design Project Length on Team Collaboration and Leadership in Senior Mechanical Engineering Projects

Abstract

This paper describes exploratory research regarding leadership and communication within undergraduate engineering design teams. The case study was performed on student design projects of one and two semester duration to begin to assess the impact of project length on leadership and communication within the design teams. Data was collected using a survey that was given to the participants in three capstone design projects in Clemson University’s senior design course. The survey was administered within one month of course and project completion. While there were differences in the communication and leadership patterns between the teams, there were other possible influences beyond the project length such as team size and organization, organizational and geographic distribution, and the nature of the product. As a result, further research is proposed to study leadership and communication structures within undergraduate teams and multi-team systems (MTS).

The history of engineering leadership development in academia: Influences, influencers, and a general roadmap

“…Some EL educators made the case for EL curriculum to be embedded into capstone courses where evaluation and assessment could occur through project implementation (Novoselich & Knight, 2018). Efforts to assess leadership development in capstone courses related to leadership effectiveness within teams (Novoselich & Knight, 2018), the impact of the project timespan on leadership development (Righter et al., 2017), and leadership behaviours appropriate for capstone situations compared to workplace needs (Chowdhury et al., 2020). While many of these studies report success in leadership development embedded into coursework, they also provide important critiques for the model.…”

Establishing a Protocol to Observe Leadership Behaviors Within Engineering Design Teams

“…The instrument has been further refined to investigate leadership structure and communication in design teams [72]. The modified survey instrument was used to establish the leadership structures and communication patterns in selected Capstone design teams.…”

“…The study explored the impact of the project's length on the establishment of formal leadership roles and the differences in frequency and duration of communication. The study identified that the two-semester teams appeared to function as a multiteam system (MTS) or a system of teams [72].…”

Leadership and Communication Network Identification and Analysis with Dependency Structure Matrices in Senior Design Teams

“…The case study was selected as a research method because it allows the study of the team in its natural environment thus enabling the researcher to identify challenges and trends within this natural context [48]- [50]. A previous study undertaken to explore the impact of project length on leadership structure, however, suggested that the leadership structures were more complex than could be determined with the selected approach [51]. A single two-semester design team with ten members was selected to explore these complex leadership structures with the study leader serving as a graduate student advisor on the team with a faculty coach.…”