Building Interdisciplinary Teams through Student Design Competitions: A Case Study
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Date
2022-04-27
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Abstract
The relationships between architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) practitioners have grown increasingly complex, necessitating improvements to both design and construction procedures. This complexity has heightened the need for increased collaboration among all lean stakeholders. However, universities are often criticized for not developing essential, generic skills in their graduates—especially an ability to work collaboratively in teams. Attempting to better prepare students, academic institutions are creating vehicles to help their students acquire effective teamwork skills. Competitions, for example, have spread to almost every discipline, including the AEC-related ones, since they have much to offer students of the built environment. This research assessed participants’ experience of an interdisciplinary design competition to determine if students were experiencing identified teamwork attributes. Additionally, this research aimed to identify areas where educators should prioritize their efforts to better prepare students for enhanced teamwork performance. In addition to highlighting that teams should be appropriately composed of members with critical, needed skill sets, results from a post-event survey of the case study competition also suggest there is a need to teach students how to develop clear and shared goals, develop clear and understandable roles, and communicate more effectively when working in teams.
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Teamwork, Collaboration, AEC (architecture engineering and construction), Interdisciplinary Competition, Lean Integrated Design Delivery