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

8/13/2019 Teamwork Differences Among Male and Female Engineering Students in IIUM Gombak Campus

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TEAMWORK

DIFFERENCES

AMONG MALE AND

FEMALE

ENGINEERINGSTUDENTS IN IIUM

GOMBAK CAMPUS

4/25/2012

Noor Sheila binti Mohamed Roselley

0836016Section 38


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Teamwork Differences Among Male And Female Engineering Students In IIUM Gombak

Campus

English for Academic Writing (EAW)-LE 4000 Section 38 Page 2

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 self-

ratings, 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 productivitybut, 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 exper iences

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 Sometimes Occasinally Never

M F M F M F M F

Q2: Did you find the team projectmeaningful and relevant to your learning

objectives for the course?

2 2 3 5 2 0 0 0

Q3: Did you find the team project

meaningful and relevant to your learning

objectives and your future career?

2 5 4 1 1 1 0 0

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?

1 1 5 4 1 2 0 0

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 No of respondentsMale Female Male Female

Teamwork 6 5 Flexibility 3 2

Organization 0 3 Leadership 2 1

Communication 3 3 Do not like teams 0 0

Teammates are lazy 0 0 Others 0 0


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Q7: Do you believe the instructor should formulate the teams for the class project?

Male Female

Yes 4 3

No 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 4

M F M F M F M F

Q8: Use negotiation skills? 0 0 2 2 5 5 0 0

Q9: Handle team conflict? 0 0 2 2 5 5 0 0

Q10:Trust your team members commitment to anacademic projects?

0 0 0 0 7 6 0 1

Discussions

Demographics and Qualif ying In formation

1. Gender

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.

50%50%

No of RespondentsMale Female


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2. 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.

2 2

3

1

0

2

3

1

0

0.5

1

1.5

2

2.5

3

3.5

NoofRespondents

Majoring

No of Respondents vs Majoring


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Team Project Exper iences

1. Q1: For your course assignments, how many team projects have you beeninvolved in one academic year?

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 learningobjectives for the course?

Q3: Did you find the team project meaningful and relevant to your learning

objectives and your future career?

4

3

0

4

2

1

0

0.5

1

1.5

2

2.5

3

3.5

4

4.5

0 project 1-2 projects 3-4 projects 5-6 projects 7-8 projects 9-10

projects

More than

10 projects

No

ofRespondents

No of Projects

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

Male

Female


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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?

Figure 4 Results from Male Students

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

2

3

22

4

11

5

1

0

1

2

3

4

5

6


NoofRespondents(Male)

Relevant to learning

objectives

Relevant to future career

Members failed to Produce

2

5

0

5

1 11

4

2

0

1

2

3

4

5

6


NoofRespondents(Female)

Relevant to learning

objectives

Relevant to future career

Members failed to Produce


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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?

Figure 6 Male students primary role

Organizer

0%

Researcher/Det

ective

29%

Project Leader0%

Creative

0%

Other

71%

Male


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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.

Organizer

0%

Researcher/Det

ective

72%

Project Leader

14%

Creative

0% Other14%

Female


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4. Q6: List the top two things you learned from working in a team.

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.

6

0

3 3

2

5

3 3

2

1

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

NoofRespondents

Male

Female


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5. Do you believe the instructor should formulate the teams for the class project?

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?

4

33

4

0

0.5

1

1.5

2

2.5

3

3.5

4

4.5

Male Female

NoofRespondents

Gender

No of Respondents vs Gender

Yes

No


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Figure 9 Results from Male Students

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

2

5

2

5

0

7

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

No

Confidence

Limited

Confidence

Moderate

Confidence

Strong

Confidence

Negotiation skill

Handle team conflict

Trust team members

commitment

2

5

0

2

5

00

6

1

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

No

Confidence

Limited

Confidence

Moderate

Confidence

Strong

Confidence

Negotiation skill

Handle team conflict

Trust team members

commitment


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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 other-

common 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

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Appendices

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

Documents

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