Matthew W Ohland

• PhD, Civil Engineering, University of Florida
• Dale and Suzi Gallagher Professor at Purdue University West Lafayette

Background Teamwork has become a central element of engineering education. However, the race‐ and gender‐based marginalization prevalent in society is also prevalent in engineering student teams. These problematic dynamics limit learning opportunities, isolate historically marginalized students, and ultimately push students away from engineering, f...

This paper discusses the developments during Year 2 for a project concerned with analyzing the curricula of engineering programs in the United States to understand the structural barriers embedded in degree requirements that could push out diverse groups of students. We are using an emerging method for quantifying the complexity of these programs c...

This descriptive study reports norms for team process and outcome measures for various populations. We collected the data using the Comprehensive Assessment of Team-Member Effectiveness (CATME) Team Tools system. We observed gender differences for Task Conflict and Psychological Safety with small effect sizes. We observed differences on multiple te...

CONTEXT While international students bring their unique values, attitudes, and knowledge as team assets when collaboratively solving engineering problems, it is critical to better understand if all members feel safe and respected within their teams. GOAL Although prior literature has shown the key role of cultural diversity of teammates on team out...

Introduction Engineering classrooms have adopted team-based learning as a popular and effective pedagogy for a long time [1-3]. Given the booming of computer-assisted learning technologies, instructors could easily observe the different ways of interaction and collaboration across teams and among team members within the same team. Perhaps most of t...

In spite of the sudden onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, many instructors who used team-based pedagogies shifted them online rather than suspending them entirely, but with limited time and resources. To examine the difference in team dynamics and outcomes for courses in Spring 2019 and Spring 2020 of over 1500 first-year engineering students per seme...

Teamwork is a critical component of many academic and professional settings. In those contexts, feedback between team members is an important element to facilitate successful and sustainable teamwork. However, in the classroom, as the number of teams and team members and frequency of evaluation increase, the volume of comments can become overwhelmi...

Higher psychological safety (i.e., a common feeling among team members to take interpersonal risks without any fear of negative consequences) is related to increased learning in teams, yet there is no comprehensive study in engineering education to see how individual and team-average psychological safety are related to students' team experience, an...

italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Contribution: This work provides evidence of various approaches to studying longitudinal student unit record data in undergraduate education in the USA and the outcomes that can be realized using a large multi-institutional longitudinal dataset, Multip...

This work-in-process research paper investigates common themes in peer-to-peer comments of teamwork behavior effectiveness collected with peer evaluations in engineering student teams in three time horizons – prior to COVID-19 pandemic, early phase of pandemic, and mature phase of pandemic. Constructive feedback is imperative to maintaining healthy...

This article discusses and critiques one Chinese national strategy, New Engineering Education (NEE). To maintain globally technical and scientific competitions, increasing demands of qualified engineering talents becomes imperative. Building on previous experiences of engineering education reform, the Ministry of Education (MOE) in China proposes t...

To achieve the benefit of the growing emphasis on teamwork in engineering courses, it is important to improve how student teams are managed. A prominent way to promote social constructive collaboration is the use of peer evaluations, which enable engineering students to learn from feedback provided from other team members to improve their performan...

Students learning in teams have long been viewed as an effective pedagogical tool in undergraduate engineering education (e.g., Felder & Brent, 2016; Wankat & Oreovicz, 2014). Evidence from the literature indicates that team-based learning approaches usually effectuate more favorable student learning outcomes and learning behaviors, in terms of kno...

Women are minoritized in U.S engineering programs and most engineering classrooms, and a variety of evidence indicates that they face inequities in team interactions. To reduce the impact of these inequities, some research indicates that instructors should avoid isolating women in engineering teams. While there are studies of mixed-gender teams in...

This article describes the data related to co-enrollment density (CD), a new network clustering index, that can predict persistence and graduation. The data hold the raw results and charts obtained with the algorithm for CD introduced in "Co-Enrollment Density Predicts Engineering Students' Persistence and Graduation: College Networks and Logistic...

Understanding how psychological dynamics in teams influence the effectiveness of students' teamwork behaviors improves instructors' ability to manage student teams. This research study explored the relative importance of three measures of team dynamics in predicting five behavioral dimensions of effective teamwork. Data were collected from 1780 stu...

This research paper explores how longitudinal team-based training influences engineering students' peer rating quality. Engineering students will be expected to work in teams, and the ability to effectively cooperate and communicate is increasingly recognized by technical corporations. Teamwork is an important outcome included in the accreditation...

Machine learning is a powerful method for modeling in different fields such as education. Its capability to accurately predict students' success makes it an ideal tool for decision-making tasks related to higher education. The accuracy of machine learning models depends on selecting the proper Hyper-Parameters (HPs). However, it is not an easy task...

ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Students persi stence Lo gi stic regr essi on Engi neering education Receiv er operating char acteris tic curv es Network an al ysi s ABSTRACT College retention is a concern for educational institutions and research ers. This concern is particularly acute in engineering for reasons includ ing workforce shortages, economic com...

Machine learning is a powerful method for modeling in different fields such as education. Its capability to accurately predict students' success makes it an ideal tool for decision-making tasks related to higher education. The accuracy of machine learning models depends on selecting the proper hyper-parameters. However, it is not an easy task becau...

Although computing occupations have some of the greatest projected growth rates, there remains a deficit of graduates in these fields. The struggle to engage enough students to meet demands is particularly pronounced for groups already underrepresented in computing, specifically, individuals that self-identify as a woman, or as Black, Hispanic/Lati...

Retention and graduation rates in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) careers are a worldwide concern because of the shortage of professionals in STEM fields. While there is a high need for computer professionals in industry, enrollment in computing programs has not kept pace with that demand. This is further exacerbated when t...

Drawing from social exchange theory and the relational approach to social exchange relationships, we examine liking and competence judgments as predictors of dyadic viability, a new, complementary, operationalization of team viability. We also consider team-level task interdependence as a moderator of these dyadic relationships. Based on data from...

Although student retention remains a significant concern for all Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields, it is particularly problematic in computing, where enrollment in such programs has not kept pace with the industry demands. Thus, finding meaningful patterns in historical data can help education researchers to reveal th...

CONTEXT One of the obstacles to teaching teamwork skills is that engineering students and faculty are immersed in a culture focused more on technical issues rather than organizational behaviours. Earlier research has shown that students have misconceptions about the nature of engineering work that affects their desire and ability to engage in coll...

Peer evaluation has been well established as an effective method to motivate team members to reflect their contribution and performance, to enforce a sense of responsibility, to act as an incentive for demonstrating good interpersonal skills, and to help the team achieve its goals. Behaviorally anchored rating scales are generally considered an eff...

There have been many lawsuits targeting organizations that have yet to make an effort to make their websites accessible to persons with disabilities. And hence, many vendors have started to make an effort in making their web interfaces accessible to persons with disabilities. Many research studies have also emerged, targeting user studies of person...

Engineers are spending a lot of time with teamwork and collaboration. Hence, teamwork skills are increasingly valued by many companies, and many college engineering courses require their students to do group projects. Peer evaluation is a way to assess the quality of teamwork, but this assessment might be influenced by many factors. For instance, s...

This research full paper investigates how much the type of leadership role and the type of team leadership structure that engineering students prefer before teamwork will affect students' perception of team processes and outcome. Team processes are team-level attributes that influence team effectiveness and reflect team members' collective attitude...

This full paper aims to investigate students' academic outcomes based on their rurality classification. Despite the large number of studies investigating students' demographics across engineering disciplines, few studies consider how rurality-coming from a rural area-influences students' academic performance. This study also aims to study the varie...

Background and purpose: Billions of dollars are spent helping new employees transition into the workforce every year. A type of onboarding process that is popular in the engineering practice is the rotational onboarding program where new engineering graduates spend time rotating through different departments within a company to gain knowledge of th...

This Teaching and Learning Experiences in Engineering Education work-in-progress paper examines cultural influences on engineering student teamwork and peer assessment behavior. Teamwork skills are considered an important competency of engineering students and a learning objective of ABET. Students from all over the world come to developed countrie...

This research full paper investigates how the percentage of women or international students in a team is related to the psychological safety of first-year engineering team members. Background: Psychological safety provides safe environment for team members to easily express their opinions and make decision without being worry about the consequence...

This research full paper investigates that to what extent the psychological safety can predict conflict and cohesion in teams. Background The primary goal for engineering instructors after forming teams is increasing the effectiveness of teamwork. They want all students participate in the projects, learn from the project, and bring their idea into...

Individual Item or Dimension Analysis (IDA) using the Social Relations Model (SRM) has the power to reveal subtle changes in behavior as recorded in a behaviorally anchored scale. These changes cannot be seen in Across Dimension Analysis (ADA). Analysis of mean and standard deviation across all 5 CATME dimensions does not uncover differences at the...

Teamwork is an essential skill for undergraduate engineering students, and engineering instructors often form teams in the classrooms. However, many factors can affect the effectiveness of teamwork. One factor that could affect the result of teaming is the diversity in teams. Although team diversity could increase creativity and innovation in teams...

Effective teamwork behaviors are considered critical by employers hiring engineers and globally diverse teams have become intertwined in many technical endeavors. Complicating the use or development of team skills in this environment, ethnic and cultural differences influence team interactions and their measurement. This work is an exploratory stud...

This paper examines the use of peer evaluations and associated personal and team questions to diagnosis team functionality and provide early diagnosis of team dysfunctionalities. For a large STEM Capstone program in a major Midwestern university we collected peer evaluation data three times and examined both peer evaluation data and the relationshi...

Background Pipeline and pathways models influence persistence metrics used to study how students navigate engineering education. Purpose This study presents pipeline, pathways, and ecosystem models and their associated metrics, compares and contrasts these models using an intersectional approach to explore persistence, and advocates for use of an...

Background Although researchers have documented the outcomes of various out‐of‐class activities for undergraduate students, less attention has been given to student perspectives on activity category and activity levels, particularly when considering demographics such as gender and race/ethnicity. Purpose/Hypothesis This study aims to create a more...

Emergent states are team-level attributes that reflect team members’ collective attitudes, values, cognitions, and motivations and influence team effectiveness. When measuring emergent states (e.g., cohesion, conflict, satisfaction), researchers frequently collect ratings from individual group members and aggregate them to the team level. After agg...

This study aims to provide a nuanced profile of civil engineering students' out-of-class engagement by exploring the supporting incentives and barriers to involvement and the related outcomes. Data were collected from undergraduate students using the Postsecondary Student Engagement (PosSE) Survey and were analyzed using descriptive statistics. The...

The use of science and engineering skills to address the novel challenges of modern society through innovative solutions is regarded as an essential strategy around the world. Many of the studies on innovators, however, are not specific to engineers. To address this gap, this study explored engineers’ views of innovation and the attributes of engin...