Trepidation-free teamwork teaching

Teamwork is a fact of life for engineers, and sooner (hopefully) or later, successful engineers develop a good set of skills for working together to accomplish a project. Somewhat more challenging is working on a team that includes non-engineers: the "marketing department", for instance. Since the advent of ABET 2000, most professors are aware of this challenge, and have found ways to include teamwork in their classes and curriculum. This column provides an introduction to teamwork resources available on the IEEE A-P-S Education Web site. Tools to help students understand team dynamics, to help students organize their teams, and to help assess the team experience are given. This material is adapted from materials prepared by the University of Utah CLEAR Center. The author gratefully acknowledges the contributions of April Kedrowicz, Katie Sullivan, Juliane Mora, Damon Hall, and Andrew Dohanos.