Effective teaching of technical teamwork to large cohorts of engineering students in China

Teamwork skills are recognized internationally as important skills for engineering professionals. Literature shows that professional skills, especially teamwork skills, have not been included into the curriculum design and assessment in Chinese engineering programmes, and little work has been done to find the effective way to learn teamwork for engineering students in academic settings in China. This work attempts to implement successful cooperative learning practices from the West to a Personal Development Plan module with teamwork skills as one of its main teaching objectives in a joint Sino-UK degree programme in China. This paper reports the real situation of cooperative learning for Chinese engineering students. Experimental results indicate that there is no significant difference between different grouping methods on both academic and teamwork performance, although self-selected groups do not appear to be the best approach for Chinese students. No statistical correlation was observed between peer rating and the mark obtained for the task. Students can rate themselves and others, and different genders without bias. In the MBTI test, we found higher frequencies of Feeling over Thinking, and Judging over Perceiving. These students need more knowledge and training on conflict resolution skills and multi-task management skills to overcome their intrinsic weakness in cooperative learning.