An empirical study: Team charters and viability in freshmen engineering design

While the concept of teams has been diffused into engineering education as an instructional activity for nearly two decades, questions remain about how best to provide instruction so that it supports student teams´ effectiveness without compromising technical content. Additionally, employers in industry, government, and higher education have an insatiable need for engineers proficient in work that requires multi-disciplinary teams. The issue is further compounded by the sky-rocketing cost of education-students and families want an acceptable rate of return on their tuition. Administrators must determine how to increase value-adding coursework. Engineering education and team literature is replete with theoretical and descriptive studies focused on adding separate team-building courses to the already full and expensive mandatory class lists. Students and their families do not want to pay for more credits; they want more for their investment. To this end the current study looks at one facet of planning, team charter enactment, in relation to team effectiveness-operationalized as team viability within an existing freshmen design engineering course at a large Mid-Atlantic university.