Assessment of Demographic Biases Associated With the Ground Rules System in a Large Undergraduate Engineering Course

Despite more women and underrepresented students entering engineering, there are still gaps in achievement. A potential remedy is to establish equitable team dynamics during groupwork. Groupware systems have been implemented in the workforce and, recently, piloted in undergraduate lower-division education to establish team norms. The authors' prior work found that there was a significant association between gender and the utility of rules systems to establish team norms. To assess biases regarding gender and minority groups in the rules system, the authors examined the differences between rules chosen by individuals and teams based on demographic characteristics in a large engineering course. Students individually identified which rules were most important when working in a team, then formed teams and performed a “negotiation” to choose which rules the team would follow. The authors used statistical analyses to determine whether certain demographic factors predicted how influential an individual was during the selection process. The authors found that demographic and educational characteristics did not have a significant influence on decision-making for team rules. Furthermore, they found that female and first-generation students were more likely to select the rule “Play an active part in the team” than their male or continuing-generation peers.

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