Interdisciplinary teamwork artefacts and practices: a typology for promoting successful teamwork in engineering education

ABSTRACT

Professional organisations and engineering educators in Australia recognise that interdisciplinary teamwork skills are increasingly important for engineering graduates to develop. However, knowledge and resources for how best to develop those skills is underdeveloped. This article addresses that gap by introducing a new conceptual framework and typology for promoting successful interdisciplinary teamwork. The analysis is based upon several long-term ethnographic studies of interdisciplinary student teams. The conceptual framework is called Interdisciplinary Teamwork Artefacts and Practices (ITAP), and the six types of ITAPs are: (1) orienting, (2) operating, (3) levelling, (4) proposing, (5) aligning, and (6) structuring. This typology can be used to help instructors and students alike navigate the challenges of interdisciplinary teamwork while maximising interdisciplinary learning outcomes.

KEYWORDS:

• Interdisciplinary
• teamwork
• artefacts
• ethnography
• shared mental model

Acknowledgments

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under grant EEC #1929726. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. I am grateful to Dr. Corey Schimpf for providing valuable feedback that informed this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. In this article, the term ‘interdisciplinary’ is taken to mean simply a team composed of people from different disciplines, with nothing implied about their level of integration. The typology is relevant to all such teams, with most of the types also being important for even single discipline teams.

2. Artefacts are defined here as objects, either physical or digital/virtual, created and/or used by people.

3. That study systematically reviewed 104 articles (narrowed down from 713) about engineering or computer science team projects published between 2007 and 2012. It covered the databases that include the primary journals in engineering education, science education, management, business, and other relevant fields: Education Research Complete, Academic Search Complete, Psychology and Behavioural Sciences, and Business Source Complete. Several types of methodological validity were utilised. Given the scope of that review, its relevance to engineering education specifically, and its resonance with the ethnographic data informing the article at hand, other teamwork concepts were not specifically sought out.

4. Social loafing is not included in this article because social loafing was not a problem in the studies that informed this typology. Social loafing was not excluded prior to data collection, but rather after analysis revealed that it did not emerge as an issue in these teams. Additionally, social loafing does not pose any particular challenges to interdisciplinary teamwork compared to single-discipline teamwork, and social loafing is not related to interdisciplinary communication in the same way the other concepts are.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation [EEC #1929726].

Notes on contributors

Kacey Beddoes

Kacey Beddoes is a Project Director in the College of Engineering Dean's Office at San Jose State University. She holds a Ph.D. in Science and Technology Studies (STS) from Virginia Tech, along with graduate certificates in Women’s and Gender Studies, and Engineering Education. Dr. Beddoes serves as Associate Editor for AJEE and Managing Editor for Engineering Studies. She is also the past Chair of the Working Group on Gender and Diversity for the European Society of Engineering Education. Further information can be found on her website: www.sociologyofengineering.org.