This engineering education research initiation grant will implement a rigorous experimental methodology to examine the impact of team activities on the self-efficacy of women engineering students. The research project engages complementary expertise in engineering and psychology, and builds on existing networks and resources at the PIs institution.
The broader significance and importance of this project arises from the increasing importance of teams in engineering courses and curricula. Since recent research demonstrates the impact of self-efficacy on how well students learn, this work can broadly inform efforts to produce a better trained engineering workforce. A vigorous plan to disseminate the results of this research is proposed. This project overlaps with NSF's strategic goals of transforming the frontiers through preparation of an engineering workforce with new capabilities and expertise. Additionally NSF's goal of innovating for society is enabled by creating results and research that are useful for society by informing educational policy and practices.
The major goals of this research project were to rigorously document the observation that women engage in less active participation than men in first year student group project presentations, to begin to explore the origins of this pattern of behavior and to develop and test strategies to reduce gender stereotypic role adoption and balance active participation across men and women in engineering group project teams. We first characterized the roles of over 1000 students on over 200 mixed gender teams using two independent judges who observed videotaped final presentations in a first year introductory engineering course. We also administered a survey to over 200 of these students. We found that women on first-year engineering project teams quantitatively exhibit significantly less active participation than men – women delivered less technical information, spoke for less time and answered fewer audience questions than men. Interestingly, this pattern occurred regardless of the gender ratio of the team; even on female dominated teams, we saw this pattern. We also learned that among women, the more technical information they presented, the greater their self-perceived learning. Yet, despite this perception, women were less likely to present this information. To better understand our findings, we conducted focus groups with both female and male students who had taken the introductory engineering course. We learned that, from their perspective, teams generally strive for fairness in determining roles. However, stereotyping was evident: they reported that the technical parts were given to those who were seen as having the greatest expertise or experience, and this was most commonly men. Women did more of the report writing and adopted organizational roles such as taking notes, scheduling meetings, and distributing agendas. Some women reported that men saw women as less competent and therefore took over most of the technical work leaving little for the women to do. Solo women were particularly at risk for stereotyping. Although students recognized that their roles seemed to conform to stereotypes, they thought it was mostly self-determined – that they were not pressured into it. In a laboratory experiment, we tested two intervention strategies hypothesized to equalize participation of women in engineering teams. Both strategies were based on highlighting counter-stereotypic gender roles with the goal of reducing the influence of gender stereotypes in the group project, but were delivered using two distinct types of materials: video presentation and written guidelines. These two strategies were identified as methods easily employed in an engineering classroom. To test the effectiveness of each strategy, we designed both an intervention version (raising awareness of gender stereotyping) and a control version (addressing only best practices in teamwork, without reference to gender stereotyping) of each strategy. In the video intervention, students were shown a ten-minute video described as "an example of a successful project team." The video included clips from a group project presentation in which women instead of men are shown in the technical presentation roles. Brief interviews showed the group members relating how they avoided gender stereotypic roles, such as assigning women to be note-takers. The control video showed women in non-technical roles and the interviews related good general groupwork practices without referencing gender stereotypes. The written guidelines intervention presented content similar to the video intervention but in written form. The intervention guidelines instructed students to participate equally in all aspects of the presentation, and to avoid relegating any team members to only note-taking or other supporting roles. The control guidelines described general best practices, but stereotypes were not mentioned. We videotaped 72 mixed-gender teams (two men and two women) working for 30-minutes on a design task and recorded both verbal and nonverbal behavioral patterns as well as role adoption. Questionnaires were used to assess factors such as self-rated active participation in the group. Results of the laboratory study showed that the video intervention was effective at equalizing participation among men and women compared to the video control, while no significant effects emerged in the written guidelines conditions. This was documented both in observed speaking time and in self-reported levels of participation. We also found a significant increase in positive group dynamics (e.g. eye contact and fewer interruptions) for teams viewing the intervention video as compared to the control video. Thus, the best practice of not isolating under-represented students on teams is not enough to assure equal participation. For women, gender stereotypes influenced the roles adopted by men and women in their group project presentations. While students recognize these stereotypical patterns of behavior, they do not recognize the influence that conforming to and persisting in these patterns has on their educational outcomes. Our study revealed that using a video or a "modeling" intervention is an effective way to equalize participation and improve the team dynamics in a mixed-gender team.
