Enabling effective engineering teams: a program for teaching interaction skills

Working in teams is an integral part of modern engineering practice and education. However, successful team interaction depends on individuals possessing skills that allow them to communicate and interact with other people in adaptive and contributing styles. Simply putting people in teams does not teach them to work together effectively. A program for teaching interaction skills to engineers was developed at the University of Tennessee (USA) and has been expanded and used at the University of San Diego and in industry. This paper discusses what makes this training "a good fit" with engineering students, the background for its content, and the program's six modules. Personal experiences with teaching this material, lessons learned, and recommendations for implementation are discussed. Similarities and differences between teaching the engineering professional and student, student comments about the training and future directions are also addressed.