Board # 75 : Building Supports for Diversity through Engineering Teams

Board 124: Interpersonal Interactions that Foster Inclusion: Building Supports for Diversity in Engineering Teams

“…Previously, we found that students in more diverse teams became more aware of diversity over the course of the semester but were less inclined to act on that knowledge [23]. We also found that students develop a team understanding of diversity to finish tasks using divide and conquer methods [1].…”

Social Dialogue in the Engineering Classroom: The Effect of National Events on the Political and Social Attitudes of First-Year Engineering Students

“…To code data, the lead author listened to audio recordings of student interview sessions accompanied with a written transcript. Following, the author analyzed the written transcript and highlighted patterns in students' expressions of their lived experiences [13] . These patterns were then coalesced into themes based on similar patterns of expression.…”

Supporting Diversity in Teams Through Asset Mapping

“…To realize the potential of diverse teams, the members must do more than simply be open to diversity; even valuing diversity does not appear to be sufficient in long term design project. Rather, researchers have found that teams must also connect this value to engineering, meaning they must understand that the professional skills are linked to diversity and to technical competence [35]. When members of engineering teams have knowledge of and value the characteristics their teammates, they tend to be more creative [36] [37].…”

“…While these findings seem promising, we question the degree to which students were able to accurately self-assess some of the se competencies. Our purpose was not to evaluate whether students actually possess these skills, however, but rather to help students value these professional skills and connect the skills to engineering, as recommended by past research [35]. To better understand student perceptions of these professional skills, we sought correlations between their scores, conjecturing that the professional skills should not correlate with one another because they represent different and distinct skills.…”