Teamwork Differences Among Male and Female Engineering Students in IIUM Gombak Campus

TEAMWORK DIFFERENCES AMONG MALE AND FEMALE ENGINEERING STUDENTS IN IIUM GOMBAK CAMPUS
4/25/2012
Noor Sheila binti Mohamed Roselley 0836016 Section 38
Teamwork Differences Among Male And Female Engineering Students In IIUM Gombak Campus
Introduction Teamwork has become a very vital need in most areas. Those areas include businesses, study culture and working places. Teamwork is an important help in how to communicate effectively as well as the significance of teamwork and cooperation, goalsetting, self-discipline, respect for others, and the importance of rules (Roy, 2007). As in engineering study, teamwork is undeniable force used in completing everyday task or any complicated yet interesting assignments. The only problem that exists among engineering students in International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM) is that the female students completely refuse to form a team with the male students to complete their assignments regardless the subjects. According to Gneezy, Niederle and Rustichini in their researches showed that women are shy or either different when working in group environments hence performing worse than men due to that factor (2003). However, a finding stated that men prefer to compete as individual rather than women who want to compete as a team (Healy & Pate, 2011). When talking about performance, Ivanova-Stenzel and Kbler said that women perform best when competing in pure female teams, but men need women to exist in that environment for their best performance. By other means, men actually need women to initiate their acts (2005). Few opinions believed that gender coalition in group work generates diverse notions of different angles and various aspects. If there is only sole gender in a team, individual opinion may influence the teammates as the perception to think is same. However, Okudan stated that in engineering, a homogeneous design teams or just one gender grouping performs better than those heterogeneous counterparts (2002). The main objective of this survey is to identify the differences that come to existence when male and female IIUM engineering students form a group work without gender coalition. This paper will also uncover some factors that usually being ignored by both
English for Academic Writing (EAW)-LE 4000 Section 38
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genders, their weaknesses that can ruin the group task or illustrate advantages that will eventually help the team. Physical differences of different genders are noticeable observable fact. Thus, the ways they are communicating, thinking and expressing emotions would not be the same.
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Literature Review If we search thoroughly through the internet, newspapers, journals or even books, there are ample of evidences or researches talking about how men and women difference from engineerings teamwork aspect. Men and women are physically different. But, people always think that they are the same nowadays. Some maybe agree with this statement but some maybe not. From University of Tennessee behavioural model of team performance, McGourty, DeMeuse and Dominick (1994) said We use a behavioural model of team performance that identifies four dimensions of behaviour essential to effective teamwork: communication, collaboration, decision-making, and self-management. This statement referred for both men and women teams. According to McAnear and Seat (2001), Women and men provided similar selfratings, received comparable ratings from their teams, and provided congruent self-team ratings. This showed that they agreed that women and men are the same in doing any group works. On the contrary, the results of these studies are somewhat contradictory. For example, research comparing the decision quality of all-female teams to all-male teams has shown that all-female teams performed worse than all-male teams like mentioned by Sashkin and Maier (1971), performed equal to all-male teams (Bray, Kerr &Atkin ,1978) and outperformed all-male teams (Wood, Poleck&Atkin, 1985). Eagly and Karau (1991) agreed with Wood (1987) that all-male teams were shown to perform better in short-term task activities, and all-female teams were shown to perform better in social activities. Johnson and Schulman (1989) and Wheelan (1996) agreed that others noted that men-majority and women-majority group did not differ in effectiveness and productivity but, Rogelberg and Rumery (1996) said that ...but that with a task oriented toward males, decision quality improved as the male gender ratio increased.
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On other opinion showed that women will favour more to group work like being stated by Tonso (1996), Team where women student worked in at least pairs allowed for substantially different kinds of discussion, learning, and ways of completing course work assignments. She also stated that women did not act like men, who used mild profanity, humour based on semi-sexual, double entendres, and metaphors encouraging symbolic violence. In contrast, Leaser, Moskal, Knecht and Lasich (2003) showed that majority male teams had outperformed majority female teams with respect to total score and majority female teams outperformed majority male teams with respect to all analytic factors and total score. This is because women may use the first year of college to correct academic deficiencies. After these deficiencies have been corrected, women are likely to be better equipped to display their engineering knowledge. Based on some of the researchs, it is shown that male in engineering team work are substantially different from female but some showed negative results. This study will continue to search those differences that occur among IIUM Engineering students.
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Methodology Realizing that the teamwork among students is very important regardless of gender, this paper was written in order to identify the truth about the differences that exist among engineering male and female students. Many do not realize this situation as the group always formed a mixed participants of both gender. In order to get a reliable result, a total of 14 respondents of different gender and engineering majoring were selected to make up the sample. These selected respondents came from all engineering department students. These respondents answered a survey questionnaire structure regarding their experiences involving in team projects, their confidence level and other related questions. Data gathered from this research were then recorded for interpretation. Along with these data, other resources were also used in a form of published journal, conferences proceedings and etc. to support the survey results. In this study, the primary data came directly from the survey itself, the answers are given during the survey process After the survey part is finished, all completed questionnaires from the respondents were collected; total responses for each question were obtained and interpreted. The demographic data will be treated in high confidentiality and consent.
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Finding Team project experiences Q1: For your course assignments, how many team projects have you been involved in one academic year? No of respondents No of respondents Male Female Male Female 0 0 0 7-8 0 1 1-2 0 0 9-10 0 0 3-4 4 4 More than 10 0 0 5-6 3 2 ` Often M F 2 2 Sometimes M F 3 5 Occasinally M F 2 0 Never M F 0 0
Q2: Did you find the team project meaningful and relevant to your learning objectives for the course? Q3: Did you find the team project meaningful and relevant to your learning objectives and your future career? Q4: Did you find that there were any members in your team that consistently failed to produce the results required of them for your project?
Q5: In your last team project for a course, what was your primary role? No of respondents No of respondents Male Female Male Female Organizer 0 0 Researcher/Detective 2 5 Project Leader 0 1 Creative 0 0 Other 5 1 Q6: List the top two things you learned from working in a team. No of respondents Male Female 6 5 0 3 3 3 0 0 No of respondents Male Female 3 2 2 1 0 0 0 0
Teamwork Organization Communication Teammates are lazy
Flexibility Leadership Do not like teams Others
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Q7: Do you believe the instructor should formulate the teams for the class project? Male Yes No Female 4 3 3 4
How confidence are you in your ability to: (Rate 1-4 where 1=No confidence, 2=Limited confidence, 3=Moderate confidence, 4=Strong confidence) 1 2 3 M Q8: Use negotiation skills? Q9: Handle team conflict? Q10:Trust your team members commitment to an academic projects? 0 0 0 F 0 0 0 M 2 2 0 F 2 2 0 M 5 5 7 F 5 5 6 M 0 0 0
4 F 0 0 1
Discussions Demographics and Qualifying Information 1. Gender
No of Respondents
Male Female
50%
50%
Figure 1 Number of respondents according to gender The number of respondents is permitted to only 15 students for the study. This is meant to analyse the differences that exist between male and female engineering students, it is decided that from each gender must occupy the same number of respondents that is seven people which equal to 50% each.
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2. Majoring
No of Respondents vs Majoring
3.5 No of Respondents 3 2.5 2 1.5 1 0.5 0 0 1 1 2 2 2 3 3
Majoring
Figure 2 Number of respondents according to majoring To cover up all the engineering majoring in IIUM Gombak campus, the survey is done randomly around all the Engineering Building. The number of respondents for each course is shown in the chart with Biotechnology and Material Engineering has the highest number of respondents with three respondents. On the other hand, Computer Information Engineering does not contribute to the total number of respondents. Other majoring mostly has two respondents each.
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Team Project Experiences 1. Q1: For your course assignments, how many team projects have you been involved in one academic year?
No of Respondents vs No of Projects (one academic year)

4.5 4 4 4 3 2 Male 1 0 0 project 1-2 projects 3-4 projects 5-6 projects 7-8 projects 9-10 projects More than 10 projects Female 3.5 3 2.5 2 1.5 1 0.5 0
No of Respondents
No of Projects
Figure 3 Number of Respondents versus Number of Projects involved in one whole academic year according to Gender Based on the above chart, for one whole academic year, all engineering students have been involved with many team projects in their majoring. The chart shown that female student has more number of projects involved compared to male students with 1 of female student have seven to eight projects per year. Mostly, all engineering students involved with three to four projects per year. Because of this average number of projects engineering students participated in, so they will have enough experience regarding teamwork matters. 2. Q2: Did you find the team project meaningful and relevant to your learning objectives for the course? Q3: Did you find the team project meaningful and relevant to your learning objectives and your future career?
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Q4: Did you find that there were any members in your team that consistently failed to produce the results required of them for your project?
6 5 5 No of Respondents (Male) 4 4 3 3 2 2 2 1 1 0 Often Sometimes Occasinally Never 1 1 2 Members failed to Produce Relevant to learning objectives Relevant to future career
Figure 4 Results from Male Students

6 5 No of Respondents (Female) 5 4 4 3 2 2 1 1 0 0 Often Sometimes Occasinally Never 1 1 2 Members failed to Produce Relevant to learning objectives Relevant to future career 5
Figure 5 Results from Female Students Based on graph above, we can see that in the Q2: Did you find the team project meaningful and relevant to your learning objectives for the course? there are more female student who believe that all the team projects they have done in the past are relevant to their learning objective. For male student, it is spread quite equally with two students often, three
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sometimes and the rest occasionally. This shows that male students sometimes do not believe that their teamwork project has any relationship with their learning objective. For Q3: Did you find the team project meaningful and relevant to your learning objectives and your future career?,it is also shown that female student believe more with higher number of five person answered often, agree that their teamwork projects is very relevant to their future career. Male students also believe it is relevant to future career but only sometimes with five respondents not as strong as female students who answer often. Next, Q4: Did you find that there were any members in your team that consistently failed to produce the results required of them for your project?. For this question, from male students shows higher result with five respondents answering sometimes compared to female students with only four respondents. Also, two respondents for female, answer occasionally proves that female students rarely could find a member who fails to contribute to their teamwork projects. 3. Q5: In your last team project for a course, what was your primary role?
Male
Organizer 0% Researcher/Det ective 29%
Other 71%
Project Leader 0% Creative 0%
Figure 6 Male students primary role
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Female
Creative 0% Project Leader 14% Other 14%
Organizer 0%
Researcher/Det ective 72%
Figure 7 Female students primary role A role played by a member in a team certainly very important for that team to achieve its goals. For male students, there are only 29% of the respondents who become a researcher or a detective for their last teamwork project work, but female have a higher number of 72% from total female respondents. This can be interpreted that IIUM female engineering students like to do more research work or gathering information task that male students. In contrast, male students have higher percentage of other with 71% to 14% of female student. Male students are mostly just being the common members who help other members to finish their group projects. Hart, Hasbrook and Mathes (1986) mention that women are like to be found less in prestigious job, not by virtue of inability, but due to biased assumptions about supportive role. But in IIUM, the supportive role other are having higher percentage in male than female. By contrast, 14% of female respondents having the top role of project leader. These results show that female students nowadays can work well as same as male students within a group.
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4. Q6: List the top two things you learned from working in a team.
7 6
No of Respondents
6 5
5 4 3 2 1 0
3 3
3 2 2 1
Male Female
Figure 8 Number of Respondents versus Quality Learned in Team based on Gender The sixth question is asking about the things that learned from working in a team. Male students, with just higher of one respondent to female students, have learned teamwork, how a team actually work in doing the projects, the needed of each other in one group. Female students on the other hand, learn about organization, how to organize thing correctly and neatly when in a team. None of male respondent learns this value. Other values like communication, flexibility and leadership are having a merely same number of respondents from each gender. While the three other things like teammates are lazy, do not like teams and others do not have any respondent each. In shorts, the group is in good condition without having spoiled teammates.
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5. Do you believe the instructor should formulate the teams for the class project?
No of Respondents vs Gender
4.5 4 3.5 3 2.5 2 1.5 1 0.5 0 4 3 3 4 No of Respondents
Yes No
Male Gender
Female
Figure 8 Number of Respondents versus Gender about instructor formulating team Asking about the formation of team, the results seem to show a small difference between these two genders. Male students believe that instructor of their course should formulate the team more the female students. But, female students result more favour to formulate the team themselves by advance of one respondent. This situation maybe because female students dont want to be team up with male students but male did not actually really care about the combination in the team itself whether to be team up with male students, female students or both. 6. How confidence are you in your ability to: (Rate 1-4 where 1=No confidence, 2=Limited confidence, 3=Moderate confidence, 4=Strong confidence)
Q8: Use negotiation skills? Q9: Handle team conflict? Q10: Trust your team members commitment to an academic projects?
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8 7 7 6 5 5 5 4 3 2 2 2 1 0 0 No Limited Moderate Strong Confidence Confidence Confidence Confidence Trust team members commitment Negotiation skill Handle team conflict
Figure 9 Results from Male Students

7 6 6 5 5 5 Negotiation skill 4 3 2 2 2 1 1 0 0 No Limited Moderate Strong Confidence Confidence Confidence Confidence 0 0 Trust team members commitment Handle team conflict
Figure 10 Results from Female Students These last three questions are trying to figure out the confident level of the respondents as they involve in team formation. For Q8: Use negotiation skills? having similar feedback for both gender of students. None has answered no confidence or strong confidence when using negotiation skill in teams. Both gender only come out with mostly moderate confidence rather than limited confidence. The Q9: Handle team conflict? question, it has the same result as question eight with the same number of respondents answering moderate confidence and limited confidence English for Academic Writing (EAW)-LE 4000 Section 38
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for both gender. This shows that gender are moderately having confidence to deal with the conflict and quarrel within their own team. Based on these two questions, it is slightly difference from the statement of Brainard and Carline (1998), barriers of women in engineering included self-confidence, lack of acceptance into department, feeling intimidated, isolation and lack of interest as the result of the survey done are similar for both gender. The last question, Q10: Trust your team members commitment to an academic projects? has a slight difference in the answer. For female students, there is a respondent who has strong confidence in trusting their team member in doing projects. For all male respondents and the rest female respondents satisfied by answering moderate confidence in trusting members commitments. By having only one with strong confident, is enough to agree that female are more confident to entrust their teammates when are given a group work or a team project. This situation is same like mentioned by McAnear and Seat (2001) that women are rated higher by team member on the team performance. Results generally do not show a big teamwork difference between male and female IIUM engineering students. Limited evidence was found in order to support the small difference exists between these two genders. In brief, the result show small differences on male and female students, like agreed by McAnear and Seat (2001), Women and men provided similar self-ratings, received comparable ratings from theirs teams, and provided congruent self-team ratings. In short, this study found no meaningful differences between men and women on ratings of team behaviour.
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Conclusion Working in group is a certain part of life in management and engineering workplaces, and academic curricular in engineering also in same pace of this trend. Team projects level now cannot be escape from secondary or even tertiary education that reflects the reality of individual skills as well as coping with teamwork skills in one self which are needed for graduation and workplaces afterwards. At the same time, the results of this study do not really reveal the obvious teamwork differences between male and female engineering students in IIUM Gombak campus. Some few noticeable reasons are the number of sample taken from engineering students population is small; the numbers of respondents of each majoring also not same as they are not present at the time survey were conducted. Another reason is that, some other questions about asking comfortability of each other gender should be added in the question, but there are no similar questions were found from the example taken in an earlier research. The result is quite satisfactory as some differences are came out like the primary role in the team with female students favouring to be researchers and male students as othercommon members (supporting team). Another one is that female students believe that their team projects are relevant to their learning objective and future career more than male students result. Even only a small number differences in respondents shows that male and female thinking are different. Thus, this study should have further research to improve its result. Some modifications are needed like adding more respondents to the survey, with longer time, adding more demographics data to show difference like by age and nationality and also adding more related question to study deeper differences of teamwork between male and female engineering students. Future research will show differences result and mature findings.
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REFERENCES Brainard, S. G., & Carline, L. (1998, October).A six-year longitudinal study of undergraduate women in engineering and science.Journal of Engineering Education, 369-375. Bray, R.M.,Kerr,N.L., &Atkin, R.S. (1978) Sex differences in group communication: A review of relevant research. Quarterly Journal of Speech,62,179-192. Eagly, A.H. &Karau, S.J. (1991). Gender and emergence of leaders: A meta-analysis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 60(5),685-710. Gneezy, U., Niederle, M., &Rustichini, A. (2003). Performance in competitive environments: Gender differences. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 118(3), 1049-74. Hart, B. A., Hasbrook, C. A., &Mathes, S. A. (1986). An Examination of the Healy, A., & Pate, J. (2011). Can teams help to close the gender competition gap?.The Economic Journal, 121(555), 1192-1204. Ivanova-Stenzel, R., &Kbler, D. (2005). Courtesy and idleness: Gender differences in team work and team competition. Johnson, R.A., & Schulman, G.I. ( 1989). Gender-role Composition and Role Entrapment in Decision-making Groups.Gender and Society,3(3),355372. Laeser, M., Moskal, B.M., Knecht, R., &Lasich, D. (2003). Engineering Design: Examining the Impact of Gender and the Teams Gender Composition. Journal of Engineering Education,92(1),4956. McAnear, T. P., & Seat, E. (2001, October).Perceptions of team performance: A comparison of male and female engineering students. Paper presented at 31st ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference. McGourty, J. W., DeMeuse, K. P., & Dominick, P. G. (1994, August).Self-managed work teams: A conceptual model for practice and research. Paper presented at Academy of management annual meeting, Dallas, TX. Okudan, G. E. (2002, February). On the gender orientation of the product design task. Paper presented at 32nd ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference,Boston,MA. Reduction in the Number of Female Interscholastic Coaches.Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport, 57(1),68-77. Roy, E. (2007). Aiming for inclusive sport: the legal and practical implications of the united nations disability convention for sport, recreation and leisure for people with disabilities.Entertainment and Sports Law Journal ,5(1). Sashkin,M.,& Maier, N.R.F. (1971).Sex effects in delegation. Personnel Psychology,86,291298. Tonso, K.L.(1996).The Impact of Cultural Norms on Women. Journal of Engineering Education. 85(3),217225. English for Academic Writing (EAW)-LE 4000 Section 38
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Wheelan, S.A., (1996). Effects of Gender Composition and Group Status Differences on Member Perceptions of Group Developmental Patterns, Effectiveness, and Productivity.Sex Roles,34,665686. Wood, W. (1987).Meta-analytic review performance.Psychological Bulletin, 102,53-71. of sex differences in group
Wood, W., Poleck, D., &Atkin, C. (1985).Sex differences in group performance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,48,63-71.
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Appendices
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Teamwork Differences Among Male and Female Engineering Students in IIUM Gombak Campus

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TEAMWORK DIFFERENCES AMONG MALE AND FEMALE ENGINEERING STUDENTS IN IIUM GOMBAK CAMPUS

Noor Sheila binti Mohamed Roselley 0836016 Section 38

English for Academic Writing (EAW)-LE 4000 Section 38

English for Academic Writing (EAW)-LE 4000 Section 38

English for Academic Writing (EAW)-LE 4000 Section 38

English for Academic Writing (EAW)-LE 4000 Section 38

English for Academic Writing (EAW)-LE 4000 Section 38

Teamwork Organization Communication Teammates are lazy

Flexibility Leadership Do not like teams Others

English for Academic Writing (EAW)-LE 4000 Section 38

Discussions Demographics and Qualifying Information 1. Gender

English for Academic Writing (EAW)-LE 4000 Section 38

English for Academic Writing (EAW)-LE 4000 Section 38

No of Respondents vs No of Projects (one academic year)

English for Academic Writing (EAW)-LE 4000 Section 38

Figure 4 Results from Male Students

English for Academic Writing (EAW)-LE 4000 Section 38

Organizer 0% Researcher/Det ective 29%

Project Leader 0% Creative 0%

Figure 6 Male students primary role

English for Academic Writing (EAW)-LE 4000 Section 38

Researcher/Det ective 72%

English for Academic Writing (EAW)-LE 4000 Section 38

English for Academic Writing (EAW)-LE 4000 Section 38

English for Academic Writing (EAW)-LE 4000 Section 38

Figure 9 Results from Male Students

English for Academic Writing (EAW)-LE 4000 Section 38

English for Academic Writing (EAW)-LE 4000 Section 38

English for Academic Writing (EAW)-LE 4000 Section 38

English for Academic Writing (EAW)-LE 4000 Section 38

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