Assessing student engagement with teamwork in an online, large-enrollment course-based undergraduate research experience in physics

[This paper is part of the Focused Collection on Instructional labs: Improving traditions and new directions.] Over the last decade, course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) have been recognized as a way to improve undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education by engaging students in authentic research practices. One of these authentic practices is participating in teamwork and collaboration, which is increasingly considered to be an important component of undergraduate research experiences and laboratory classes. For example, the American Association of Physics Teachers Recommendations for the Undergraduate Physics Laboratory Curriculum suggest that one of the goals for students in physics labs should be to develop “interpersonal communication skills” through “teamwork and collaboration.” Teamwork can have tremendous benefits for students, including increased motivation, creativity, and reflection; however, it can also pose an array of new social and environmental challenges, such as differing styles of communication, levels of commitment, and understanding of concepts. It can also be difficult for lab course instructors to evaluate and assess. In this work, we study student teamwork in a large-enrollment physics CURE. The CURE was specifically designed to emphasize teamwork as a scientific practice. We use the two sources of data, the adaptive instrument for regulation of emotions questionnaire and students’ written memos to future researchers, to measure the students’ teamwork goals, challenges, self, co-, and socially shared regulations, and perceived goal attainment. We find that students overwhelmingly achieved their teamwork goals by overcoming obstacles using primarily socially shared regulatory strategies, and that the vast majority of students felt teamwork was an essential part of their research experience. We discuss implications for the design of future CUREs and lab courses and for lab instructors desiring to assess teamwork in their own courses.

This article appears in the following collection:

Figure 1

Students were asked to rank the “degree of importance” of their teamwork goals on the AIRE survey. We plot the mean reported value of all the respondents where 2 is “extremely” or “very” important, 1 is “moderately” or “slightly” important, and 0 is “not important at all.” The whiskers represent plus and minus 1 standard deviation and the height of the bar is the standard error of the mean.

Figure 2

Most and least important goals as reported by students. Students were asked to choose their “most important” and “least important” goals from the list of goals shown on the $x$ axis. The blue bars represent the number of students reporting that goal as their most important and the orange bars represent the number of students reporting that goal as the least important. Uncertainties are calculated using the binomial confidence interval with alpha $=95\%$.

Figure 3

Students were asked to rank the “degree of difficulty” for each of the challenges on the AIRE survey. We plot the mean reported value of all the respondents where 2 is extremely or very challenging, 1 is moderately or slightly challenging, and 0 is not challenging at all. The whiskers represent plus and minus 1 standard deviation and the height of the bar is the standard error of the mean.

Figure 4

Biggest challenges as reported by students. Students were asked to choose their “biggest” challenge from the list of goals shown on the $x$ axis. Uncertainties are calculated using the binomial confidence interval with alpha $=95\%$.

Figure 5

Students were asked to rank the frequency that they used each of the (a) self-regulations, (b) co-regulations, or (c) socially shared regulations to overcome the challenge of having differing understandings of concepts where 2 is always or often, 1 is sometimes or rarely, and 0 is never. The uncertainty is given by the standard error of the mean.

Figure 6

Student responses ranking achievement of their previously indicated most important goal this semester. Uncertainties are calculated using the binomial confidence interval with $\alpha =95\%$.

Figure 7

Student responses ranking the role that the team played in achieving their indicated most important goal. Uncertainties are calculated using the binomial confidence interval with $\alpha =95\%$.

Figure 8

Student responses ranking satisfaction in their teamwork experience this semester. Uncertainties are calculated using the binomial confidence interval with $\alpha =95\%$.

Figure 9

Students were asked to rank the frequency with which they used each of the 18 regulations to overcome their “largest challenge.” We separate these regulations into subcategories of (a) self-regulations, (b) co-regulations, (c) socially shared regulations. Here, we plot the percentage of respondents who reported using each particular number of regulations for each particular frequency. For example, about 25% of respondents reported that they used four of the self-regulations, but used them only “sometimes or rarely” with $n=369$). The color of the block gives the percent of respondents who fall into each particular category.