Work in progress-male and female engineering student roles and interaction styles on online collaborative learning teams

New types of open-ended problems called "model eliciting activities" have been implemented in Purdue's required freshman engineering course Engr 106: engineering problem-solving and computer tools to promote higher level learning. By requiring a broad skill set, emphasizing technical topics in a broad social and environmental context, and incorporating teaming, these problems could also promote a more equitable learning environment. To this end, we are interested in investigating the types of interactions in which students engage as they solve these problems in teams of four. Transcripts of the discussion boards of sixteen Engr 106 student teams collaboratively solving the problems online have been examined. In this paper, we will provide descriptions of the types of roles (e.g. facilitator, critic, validator) students adopt on teams and the styles (e.g. authoritative, collaborative) with which they enact their roles as well as an overview of the qualitative research techniques and the theoretical framework we employed to identify these roles and styles. Preliminary data including coding reliabilities, the frequencies with which male and female engineering students adopt certain roles or styles, and the enactment of power within the student teams will be presented. Such knowledge will provide insight on how to better teach teaming and diversity awareness, set up student teams, and assess "effective" teamwork.