Evaluating the effectiveness of a Cooperative Learning approach in engineering education in China

The need for teamwork skills has been recognised as one of the key requirements for engineering graduates by industries world-wide, including in China. A pilot on teamwork training was conducted in a joint degree programme between a leading British university and a top Chinese university in 2011. This paper attempts to evaluate the effectiveness of this cooperative learning practice to Chinese engineering students and to identify the gap between the declarative knowledge and the skill-based outcomes. This evaluation focuses on the open-ended and qualitative items in students' expectations agreements, team function evaluation forms, peer ratings, and questionnaires. The data collected were analysed using descriptive statistics, with class observation and informal interview responses also being discussed. This qualitative study provides a good supplement to the previous quantitative findings and contributes to understanding by displaying how students perceived a Cooperative Learning practice in a mainland Chinese context, and how they reacted to the experience. It also provides an insight into the underlying cultural considerations behind the team behaviour. Instructors can design and improve team tasks for Chinese students based on these findings.