Session: 09-08-01: Distance/Online Engineering Education, Models and Enabling Technologies

Paper Number: 111718

111718 - Impact of Online Versus In-Person Group Work on Behavioral Peer Evaluations in Engineering Capstone Team Projects 

A critical open question in the pedagogical literature is whether Capstone senior design can be taught as effectively online as in-person. A key element is whether student group work conducted remotely is as effective as groups meeting in person. Onset of the COVID-19 pandemic induced a natural experiment enabling comparison of engineering student group work conducted in-person versus all-online.

Group work is an essential element of mechanical engineering education codified by Student Outcome 5 of ABET Criterion 3: “An ability to function effectively on a team whose members together provide leadership, create a collaborative and inclusive environment, establish goals, plan tasks, and meet objectives.” Peer evaluation is a common assessment for engineering group work, especially in Capstone design courses. In this paper, recurring peer evaluations are applied to quantify how well students performed in groups within a longitudinal study conducted across five semesters of a mechanical engineering Capstone senior design course.

In UF’s Mechanical Engineering Capstone courses, recuring peer evaluation surveys tied to group assignment deadlines were already established prior to COVID-19. By continuing to deploy this same survey when courses transitioned online during the pandemic, three full semesters of group performance data were collected when students were forced to meet remotely. As students returned to campus, the same survey provided comparative data for two semesters when students were meeting in person. These collected data represent a quantitative tool to evaluate how online vs. in-person group meeting setting impacts the quality of teamwork.

This study focused on each student’s contribution quality, perceived effort, accountability, technical competence, contribution to group synergy, and ability to self-start. Only perceived effort and accountability scores did not have a statistically significant score difference dependent on group meeting dynamics. Additionally, there was a strong statistically significant positive correlation between frequency of contributions, quality of contributions, and communication frequency, technical competence and perceived effort, quality of contribution, technical competence and ability to self-start.

This work shows that online vs. in-person meeting environments DID NOT have statistically significant impacts on teamwork performance for mechanical engineering Capstone students in the semesters being evaluated. This result suggests that ABET Criterion 3 Student Outcome 5 (groupwork) can be met just as effectively in online or in-person Capstone courses.

This result is important because it debunks the misconception that the quality and fidelity of Capstone groupwork is somehow diminished when senior design is taught online to learners remote from each other over the Internet. This finding adds to the growing body of evidence supporting the viability of an all-online Bachelor of Science in mechanical engineering program capable of receiving and maintaining ABET accreditation. Moreover, a forward-looking online ME program can include an effective Capstone senior design course with rich student groupwork interactions of quality equal to those experienced by students when meeting in-person.

Presenting Author: Juliana Mishur University of Florida

Presenting Author Biography: Juliana Mishur earned a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering in Fall 2023 from the University of Florida (UF). She is currently working as a Fuel Systems Integration Engineer for Cummins Inc. During her studies Juliana served as a Learning Assistant for UF’s Mechanical Engineering Capstone senior design course. Once graduated, she earned her Manufacturing Technologist certification from Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME). Juliana enjoys painting, knitting, and reading, and she is considering writing a short stories book based on her dreams.

Authors:

Juliana Mishur University of Florida
Sean Niemi University of Florida
Janna Underhill The Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering at University of Florida
Matthew Traum University of Florida