INCREASING TEAM MOTIVATION IN ENGINEERING DESIGN COURSES

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Team motivation in capstone engineering courses can significantly affect the quality of projectoutcome. Teams with high motivation often exceed expectations, while less motivated teams attimes fail to reach the potential of even a subset of their members. Successful teams typicallyexhibit a high level of independence in decision making and engineering implementation. However,many components of traditional classroom settings and student projects can hinder team motiva-tion. Moreover, some experiences with student teams have been counterintuitive; groups with slowor rocky starts may end up with higher levels of achievement, while heightened instructor interest ina project topic may result in a detrimental effect on student work. Team motivation is specificallyaddressed by research in the area of organizational behavior and group processes. This article willapply some lessons derived from group process research to the objective of increasing motivation instudent design projects. Relevant input is provided in the areas of project selection, role ofinstructor, sources of feedback, independence of groups and stages of team development. Inaddition, familiarity with group processes can increase the quality of the instructor’s experienceduring the inevitable turmoil associated with ambitious student projects. Examples of successfuland less successful mechanical engineering capstone design projects are presented to illustrate howteam development affects the engineering outcome.Â