A new group-formation method for student projects

• Tipo: Artigo em Revista Científica Internacional
• Data: 2009

Autores

José Borges (Autor) FEUP; Teresa Galvão Dias (Autor) FEUP; João Falcão e Cunha (Autor) FEUP

Revista

Título: European Journal of Engineering Education

Vol. 34 Nº 6

Páginas: 573-585

ISSN: 0304-3797

Editora: Taylor & Francis

Indexação

Scopus - 17 Citações

INSPEC

Classificação Científica

FOS: Ciências sociais > Ciências da educação

Outras Informações

ID Authenticus: P-007-S9A

DOI: 10.1080/03043790903202967

Abstract (EN): In BSc/MSc engineering programmes at Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto (FEUP), the need to provide students with teamwork experiences close to a real world environment was identified as an important issue. A new group-formation method that aims to provide an enriching teamwork experience is proposed. Students are asked to answer a questionnaire to evaluate their teamwork profiles and are assigned to groups by an algorithm aiming to achieve maximum diversity within groups and homogeneity among groups. The profile diversity/complementarity within a group is an important factor to promote members' commitment and coordination in order to achieve the proposed goals. The proposed method is compared to a standard self-selection method for three engineering programmes in three academic years. The results show that, with the new method, there are a higher number of medium ranked groups which surpass the expectation and that, contrary to some students' beliefs, the method does not have a negative impact on the overall final marks. © 2009 SEFI.

Idioma: Inglês

Tipo (Avaliação Docente): Científica