Gender-Based Teams: Perceptions of team satisfaction and effectiveness among engineering students in the united Arab Emirates

• Autores: Nausheen Pasha-Zaidi, Ernest Afari, Jaby Mohammed, Samuel Cubero, Ameera M. Shoukry, Wael El Sokkary
• Localización: The International journal of engineering education, ISSN-e 0949-149X, Vol. 31, no. 4, 2015, págs. 953-966
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • The development of teamwork skills is an important aspect of engineering education as the interdisciplinary nature of theindustry requires graduates to be able to work professionally with others in a team-based environment. Anymiscommunication or obstruction from team members can result in lower team performance, thereby affecting theoverall goal of the team. With this in mind, many engineering programs have designed their courses to address theteamwork component in engineering. Engineering design courses in particular often focus on teamwork as an integral partof the course in an effort to prepare the students for their careers. The current study addresses the perceptions of teameffectiveness and team satisfaction among students working in same-gender teams on two separate campuses of anengineering university in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Many universities in the Middle East have gender-segregatedcampuses to promote education while respecting traditional Islamic norms. While the specific execution may differ, theauthors anticipate that the results could be translatable to any team-based engineering course in the region. Based on thecurrent study, female students rated themselves as more effective in their teamwork than male students, while male studentswere more as satisfied with their teams as a whole than female students. Female students also gave higher scores on peerevaluations than male students. In both cases, however, student assessment of individual team members in the peerevaluation was higher in the intermediate course than in the introductory course. Student interviews provided additionalinsights regarding team processes in UAE university classrooms. The present study provides an exploratory analysis ofteam effectiveness and satisfaction in this unique sociocultural environment.