By:
Sadab Bahar
One
of the biggest traits that is involved in almost every engineering field, is
the ability to work with a team. Whether you are a mechanical, electrical,
packaging, or biomedical, the capability to work with groups of different
people is necessary in order to accomplish a mutual goal or complete a project.
Myron Tribus, director of the Center of Advanced Engineering Study at MIT, has
said, “[…] teams are essential for developing engineering skills” (Tribus).
Currently, my engineering professors stress the importance of cooperation
greatly as they assign projects that require a great deal of collaboration with
groups of students. On my first day of class, our class was split into groups
of 4 members and were given the marshmallow challenge. This challenge consists
of twenty sticks of spaghetti, one yard of tape, one yard of string, and one
marshmallow. The task is to build the tallest free standing structure using the
given materials in eighteen minutes and balance the marshmallow at the top. The
goal of this challenge is to teach people teamwork as well as simple
engineering skills.
In
today’s society, engineering problems are becoming more and more intricate to
solve. This is why a team of engineers with wide-ranging backgrounds are
required to fully investigate problems and create projects (Katzenbach).
Engineering teams do not simply sit around and calculate math and science
problems. These teams use imagination, creativity, planning, and technical
knowledge in order to operate successfully.
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| Photo Credit: ethics.wikia.com |
Although
working with groups can be difficult, teams can still accomplish many things if
they work together successfully. In a study conducted by Karl A. Smith from the
University of Minnesota, when a high performance cooperative learning group
work together, their performance increases drastically (Smith). The
high performance cooperative learning group was a group of individuals who met
all the criteria of a good group. Their performance was compared to groups that
worked poorly and groups that worked decently. As you can see, teamwork is a
very important skill to have as an engineer. In order to successfully become an
engineer make sure you get along with others and be a group member.
However, working in teams can be very
challenging. Problems arise when teams do not communicate well or have a
negative relationship. From my experience, a poor team causes frustration,
anxiety for deadlines, and more work than needs to be done. I learned from our
first project that working with groups can be difficult. The goal of our
project was to design a robot that follows a black line and program it to pick
up a ball with a claw. A member of my team rarely showed up to work sessions as
myself and another engineering student, would be doing almost all of the work.
I discussed with other groups how their teams were and I received many answers
similar to mine. Each person I talked to that said their group was not helpful
also experienced the same stress and anxiety as I did.
Sources:
J. R Katzenbach and D.K. Smith, The Widsom of Teams. Boston, MA:
Harvard Bussiness. School Press, 1993
Tribus, Myron. 1992. Total quality management in schools of
business and engineering. Unpublished manuscript.
Smith Karl A. “Cooperative Learning and Teamwork.” Research
and Development in Curriculum and Instruction Engineering Education (2006):
321-51. Research Gate. Research Gate, Mar. 1995. Web. 2 Oct.
2016
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