EVALUATING THE USE OF ITP METRICS IN SUPPORTING TEAMWORK

Learning to work within a team is an essential part of an engineering student’s education. However, teamwork is not something that can be easily taught; students are often expected to develop a whole range of attributes and skills that come under the umbrella term ‘teamwork’ simply by participating in team activities. The School of Engineering, University of Liverpool is addressing recent student feedback that has revealed that students would benefit from, and be comforted by, more support in developing their interpersonal communication and teamwork skills. To enhance the provision of such support from instructors, the authors have deployed ITP metrics, a suite of online tools that has been developed by The Individual and Team Performance (ITP) Lab at the University of Calgary. In particular, this paper focuses on the use of; Team Contracts, a document that outlines expectations and team norms; Personality Assessment, a tool that builds awareness of personality factors and encourages reflection; Conflict Management Styles, a tool that explores personal styles and how they influence interactions with others and; Team Health Audit, a team diagnostic tool that aims to improve team performance. This paper describes how these tools were deployed and the associated learner benefits. In particular it explores further questions relating to; students’ perceptions of using the tools; the barriers to engagement with the tools; and the alignment of these tools with different learning activities, at different levels of study. The paper finds that although the tools can support student development, activities that make use of the tools require more planning and development than initially assumed.