Cross-Disciplinary Team Learning in Engineering Project-Based: Challenges in Collaborative Learning

Cross-disciplinary team learning (CDTL) is highly interrelated with team structure, dynamics, and collaborative learning processes that are expected to occur as any team attempts to solve engineering problems. The major component of CDTL is cohesiveness in teamwork, which defined as the efforts to understand and appreciate the contributions and various disciplinary frameworks of other team members for success in the interdisciplinary collaborations. Engineering Team Project (ETP) is introduced in Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS to third year engineering students from different disciplines. Students from Mechanical, Civil, EE, Chemical and Petroleum Engineering disciplines are working in a project-based team for one semester. The framework of the CDTL is presented, in which the progressive pedagogical approach is adopted to provide a learning environment to work with others from different disciplines. Students completed in the previous ETP projects were assessed through exit interviews in order to explore the research issues. Evidently, students faced several challenges within this ill-learning environments; examples of those include lack of creativity and innovation in the design work, unrealistic project definition, variation in the assessment quality, as well as inability poor project execution and management.

I. Introduction

In the realm of engineering education, providing effective education is important in ensuring well-rounded and competent engineers who can contribute towards the nation development. Sustainable development considerations require engineers to embrace a range of additional skills beyond the engineering science they have traditionally relied upon to solve engineering problems. This will require changes to the way in which engineering education prepares students for professional practice [1].