Work in Progress: Exploring teamwork and inclusivity amongst engineering students at a South African university

摘要

This paper describes the initial findings of a pilot study into how engineering students at the University of Cape Town experience inclusivity when working in teams. Both in South Africa and abroad, competency in teamwork is a key requirement for professional accreditation and workplace performance. A survey was disseminated to a cohort of third-year mechanical engineering students to generate understandings around their experiences of teamwork. Initial findings show that, while the students view teamwork as necessary, they receive little focused teaching input into how best to work together. Also, more than a third of the students reported having felt marginalized when working in teams, either because of insufficient understanding of the engineering material or for social factors such as race, gender or language. The next stage of the project will involve a larger, cross-disciplinary sample of engineering students at the University of Cape Town. In addition, future stages include cross-faculty comparisons as well as an international collaboration with a university in Spain.