ENG1101 Introduction to Engineering Problem Solving

Assessment Overview and Marks

This is a Team Assessment

This project represents 15% of the total marks for the course. This equates to approximately 23 hours of effort per team member and 120-180 hours per team. Your report should reflect this effort. This course and assessment is based on a Problem Based Learning philosophy derived from Vygotsky's sociocultural theory (Problem based learning n.d.; Vygotsky's Sociocultural Theory n.d.). Consequently the onus is on the student to actively engage in the course by collaborating within a team, building on the team's collective prior knowledge, to solve a problem through collective research. It is therefore essential that each individual engage with their colleagues to facilitate their own learning, as peers will provide 'scaffolding' that supports the learner at the level that they require (Verenikina 2003).

Breakdown of Assessment Tasks

For this Team Report you will submit two Parts in the one report document. Part A is the team’s Code of Conduct and Part B is the team’s Project Management. Each Part has two sub-parts (refer Table 1), and each sub-part may have a number of tasks. Figure 1 shows a key to the icons used throughout this document to help you find the various sections.

Table 1: Report 1 tasks

Aims of this Report

At the completion of this project all team members should have an understanding of the following areas:

• Team goals and rules for cooperation;
• Strategies for effective teamwork and communication;
• Application of self and peer assessment strategy;
• The Engineers Without Borders (EWB) projects, including the team’s specific project choice and project plan that demonstrates mentoring and meeting personal learning and team goals;
• Time Management Plan (TMP) sufficient to complete all sections of Report 3; and
• How to apply a problem solving strategy to achieve the above.

Submission Notes - USQ Policy

• All assignments for this course are to be submitted electronically via the StudyDesk course page.
• Late assignments are not normally accepted. If you wish to apply for consideration for late submission, it must be done at least one week prior to the due date in writing or via email. Include documentary evidence of illness (a medical certificate) or additional work commitments (a written confirmation of changed work circumstances from your supervisor). For extension applications for other reasons, please contact the Examiner at least 2 weeks in advance of the due date.
• Students are reminded of the penalties applying to plagiarism. Copying all or part of an assessment from another student, or from the web, is unacceptable. Plagiarism may result in loss of marks, or other penalties as determined by the Academic Misconduct Policy:

http://policy.usq.edu.au/documents.php?id=14132PL

• Further helpful hints on how to correctly reference (and how to avoid plagiarism) may be found at:

http://www.usq.edu.au/current-students/assessment/assignments/referencing-plagiarism

Submission Notes - ENG1101 Checklist

The Team Report should be consistently and correctly formatted and presented in a professional manner.

Additionally, for auditing and moderating purposes:

• individuals should keep a complete copy of the final submission and be able to reproduce it within 48 hours if required; and
• a record of team meetings and log of communications should also be kept by all team members, but these are not to be officially submitted unless requested by the Facilitator or Examiner. This log is not necessary if a majority of the communication is conducted on the StudyDesk discussion forums. (Note that you are free to use this data as part of your “evidence of collaboration” but it will need to be submitted as part of the assessment in that context.)

Where you have utilised a source for information or been asked to research a topic remember that you must use Harvard AGPS Referencing, including intext citations in the text body and a reference list at the end. Lack of referencing is equivalent to plagiarism, as you are effectively stealing another person’s idea(s). Even if you believe that the idea is originally yours, you must check that it has not been previously published.

Submission Checklist

When submitting the team must ensure that:

1. only one (1) Report submission is made by the team;
2. the submission is made by the team’s nominated representative;
3. the instructions provided in the ‘drop-box’ on StudyDesk are strictly followed;
4. each member must submit a PASA spreadsheet;
5. only one (1) file is submitted, apart from the nominated representative who will submit two (2);
6. the report should be original and not a scan of the original;
7. the file size requirements is strictly adhered to;
8. the file naming requirement is strictly adhered to; and
9. the submitted Report file extension is - *.doc, *.rtf, or *.pdf

Problem Solving Strategy

Problem-based learning (PBL), described very broadly, is learning that is centred on “a problem, a query or a puzzle that the learner wishes to solve” (Boud 1985, p.13). More specifically, the term ‘problem-based learning’ tends to be used to describe an approach to curriculum which is problem centred rather than discipline centred.

One of the aims of this course is for you to learn how to apply a problem solving strategy to facilitate your learning. While there are a number of viable problem solving strategies available, in this course you are encouraged to follow the problem solving cycle (PSC) shown in Figure 2.

Appendix A shows a workflow diagram for the tasks in the three Team Reports. While you need to apply the whole PSC to each individual Task, you will note the problem solving cycle has been applied at a meta-level to show how the Reports fit with each other. While this isn’t prescriptive you would do well to follow this basic guide in order to clearly demonstrate your learning. You are encouraged to look on StudyDesk for the podcast on applying a problem solving strategy, and to also do your own further research on this learning model.

Peer and Self Assessment Strategy

For each Team Report individuals in the team will be submitting a Teamwork Peer and Self Assessment (PASA) of their and other team members’ contributions to the teamwork leading to that Report. This is then used to partly inform the Facilitator’s Appraisal of each members’ efforts towards that particular team assessment, which in turn is used to calculate the individual mark for each member. This is to ensure that the marks awarded in the course are a true reflection of each individual’s effort and learning. The anonymous PASA strategy to be used by all teams is summarised in Appendix B. The team must become familiar with this PASA strategy in order to accurately recognise individual team members’ contributions to the teamwork. The results can also be used as an effective internal feedback tool for the team, if so desired.

The application of this Teamwork PASA strategy will be:

1. Your Facilitator will start a forum thread reminding you to complete your PASA for that Report. You should use the spreadsheet template your Facilitator provides, only changing the file name to include your surname and team number. You then upload your completed spreadsheet (don’t change the file type) to the Report submission area on StudyDesk. That means, for each Report, all members will submit a PASA and one will also submit the Team Report itself.
2. The Facilitator will average the scores into a percentage for each member and will collate any qualitative feedback. This compiled summary will be posted back to the forum thread after the Report has been submitted.
3. All team members are to review the percentages and clearly indicate their agreement. If they disagree then they should follow the processes clearly outlined in the team’s Code of Conduct (tip: make sure you cover this in your CoC).
4. When agreement is reached your Facilitator then uses these percentages as a guide to help them appraise each members’ contribution to the Report’s quality (and therefore mark), which in turn allows for allocation of individual marks for that team assessment.

Specifics included in the Teamwork PASA strategy are:

• The amount of participation in team meetings (note that participation is different from attendance);
• The quality of contributions of ideas and information;
• If contributions are being made in a timely way (according to the needs of the team as a whole);
• Rewards for asking team members for assistance when having trouble (this is a behaviour you want to reward as it shows the team member does not want to let the team down);
• If members are taking opportunities to pursue their personal learning goals; and
• Rewards for effective mentoring within the team.

Of course, peer and self assessment comes with many issues and pitfalls which need to be dealt with and avoided. There are a lot of resources and information to help you understand peer and self assessment. It is important that it is open and honest, allows for self improvement, and is flexible to help cover unexpected personal circumstances. Importantly, it should give each team member feedback so that they have the chance to improve. That means that the Teamwork PASA strategy should give qualitative and not just quantitative feedback to each member. It needs to outline how well and in what ways a person has participated, not just how much.

Part A - Code of Conduct

A Code of Conduct or (code of ethics) is an important document for any organisation, and is primarily used to disclose how that organisation intends to operate in day-to-day decision making (Driscoll & Hoffman 2000). For this course your Code of Conduct (CoC) should at least include team goals, expected conduct, roles and responsibilities, peer assessment, communication strategies, and contingency planning. These should be described using the two sub-parts, Conduct, Roles & Responsibilities, and Communication Strategy.

Part A.1 – Conduct, Roles & Responsibilities

Your Learning

All active team members should place a welcome message on the team’s forum (separate to the general or social forum), with some information about themselves, including how they think they will be able to work in the team (what skills, knowledge or experience they have that is relevant). This introduction and discussion is vital because it gives you a starting point for deciding how the team will work. If you feel that your team has not done this in enough depth, revisit this discussion now.

For Portfolio 1 you have already researched and discussed what is important for the team to function effectively. All members should share their ideas and findings on the discussion forum under an appropriate thread. It is only by engaging in genuine discussion (as you would using face-to-face interaction) that you will get into enough depth that you can really explore the ins and outs of how your team will function and what conditions will allow it to function optimally. You will need to work this out in terms of what the literature says on good teamwork, but also in terms of what is going to work for your team and circumstances.

Discussions should include, but not be limited to:

• Do members of the team have different goals that they are working towards? What is each member trying to achieve? How can this be brought into a cohesive aim for the team so that everyone is working together?
• Consider the roles within the team. How are you going to work together? How will you incorporate leadership? What other roles are needed within your team? What would the responsibilities of each of these roles be? You should also include the role of your “Facilitator”.
• Consider the PASA strategy in Appendix B. What are the basic standards for contribution to the team? Together discuss how your team will cope with non-participating members (that is, there is a difference between just attending meetings and actual participation). How will you assess the quality of a member’s contribution, not just the quantity, given that members are most likely to be contributing in different ways?
• Importantly, what are the realistic consequences for failing to adhere to your CoC rules? For example, while you can’t “fire” a non-performing member from the team, you can address the issue through the PASA strategy. Likewise, should the PASA process be the first time a member hears about the team’s disatisfaction, or should you include other methods as well? How will you give members a chance to improve their contribution?
• Together discuss how your team will continue to review and refine your CoC to ensure that your team is able to cope with any issues that arise. Formalise outcomes from this discussion within your CoC, by including contingency plans for how to proceed if things do not go as expected.

As part of the Reflection in Team Report 3 you will be expected to discuss the implementation of your CoC, show how you evaluated it and made changes where necessary, and reflect on the effectiveness of applying the problem solving cycle to this task. The more discussion you can get into now, the easier this task will be and with better results. Your discussion should be ongoing, and should be refined and deepened each week.

Tip: Throughout this process you should be improving your thinking by reading relevant literature, and acknowledging the sources of your information and ideas. This is a vital aspect of academic conduct, but it also makes for better learning because it improves your thinking, discussion and communication. Make your own life easier by keeping track of your references and including them to acknowledge your sources all the time – even on discussion forum threads. This might seem like a lot of work now, but it improves your efficiency later in compiling your reports and is a vital practice to avoid plagiarism. References to the research literature should be made using the Harvard AGPS style.

Demonstrate Your Learning

Your task is to:

As a team, follow and document the problem solving cycle to summarise your individual research about what is important for a team to function effectively. All members should share their ideas on the discussion forum under an appropriate thread, in order to:

1. Develop and present the first part of the team’s Code of Conduct (A.1 Conduct, Roles & Responsibilities) which your team will follow during the semester. This should outline the procedures and standards for how the team will function optimally. The team should therefore consider issues including (but not restricted to) how the team will meet, team members’ roles and contribution, how the team will achieve genuine collaboration and undertake conflict resolution, etc. You may use tables or other figures, where appropriate, to present this information.
2. Justify, using evidence from your research, why and how these procedures and strategies will help your team to function effectively. Using excerpts from your team’s discussions, explain why these strategies are suitable for the needs and characteristics of your team in particular.

For this report task, marks will be awarded on the quality of your interaction, the participation of all your team members, and how much you have followed the problem solving cycle. This needs to be explicitly demonstrated, which could be in the form of evidence from the discussion forums, meeting minutes, etc. supplied in an Appendix in your report (and therefore referenced within your report). References to the research literature, using the Harvard AGPS style, are expected to be included within your discussion posts and the Code itself.

Part A.2 - Communication Strategy

Your Learning

Within your weekly discussions you need to develop a Communication Strategy for the team to follow. It is highly advisable to consider the following:

1. Decide on a method and required amount of regular communication, either: i) face to face meetings (considering the time and place) or ii) through a common online team meeting technology (Skype, Wimba, Zoom, Blackboard, USQ Chat, Discussion Forums, etc.). You need to make all of your interactions available to absent team members and your Facilitator, so you will need to record transcripts of your interactions where appropriate. You can also use this documentation as evidence in your Portfolios and Team Reports.
2. Discuss options for conducting your team meetings so that they are effective and efficient. This means they have to be aimed at getting something done, and done well, and getting it done as quickly as is practical. Your decisions about how to run meetings may have implications for your Code of Conduct (e.g. come prepared for meetings, agendas, etc.). There are many resources in the library or on the internet on how to organise virtual meetings (which should be correctly referenced if used in your Report).
3. One key part of your strategy should be to aim for more effective meetings, but less of them. It might help to create a table of technologies and times to see what suits each member. How will you communicate outside of meetings? Will you use the Wiki, GoogleDocs, etc. to collaborate? How will you include a team member who is inaccessible for a number of weeks or has to be absent occasionally?

This section of a Code of Conduct is more than ‘we will meet at 7pm on MSN’ or ‘at 2pm in the library’. You need to create a robust communication strategy, not just a team meeting strategy. On-campus and external (virtual) teams will need different strategies to make your communication efficient, effective and inclusive.

Teams should consider (where relevant):

• What does your research tell you about important aspects of, and strategies for, optimal team communication?
• How does your evolving communication strategy tie into other aspects of your Code of Conduct, e.g. your team members’ roles and your standards for participation?
• How can agendas and minutes be useful?
• How will you keep your Facilitator up-to-date on things like progress, outcomes, problems, participation, etc?
• How will your Facilitator monitor participation? How can they access your communication records? The more they can see of what you are doing, the more feedback they can provide you.
• How does a virtual meeting differ from a face to face meeting? Does it make it harder to achieve aims and how can this be overcome? How can your strategy help you avoid the pitfalls of virtual communication?
• What are the best forms of communication for different communication aims? For example, if the aim is to compile research and extract key points, would it be best to meet on an instant chat tool, or for each member to contribute to a forum thread?
• Remember not everyone has the same level of keyboard skills or knowledge about chat technology. This should be discussed and addressed in your Strategy.
• Past virtual teams have reported difficulties with staying on task or knowing what to work on and when, or student logged on but not in the meeting. How can you address these kinds of problems? Would it be useful to come up with a list of project aims and the communication required to meet them for each week? Could this inform part of your time management plan?

As part of the Reflection in Team Report 3, you will be expected to discuss the implementation of this Communication Strategy, show how you evaluated it and made changes where necessary, and reflect on the effectiveness of applying the problem solving cycle to this task.

Additional resources to help your learning for this task include:

• The USQ Library; a great place to look for information and our Faculty librarian, Sandra Cochrane, would be happy to assist you, including accessing the online journals from a variety of sources such as the Engineering, Arts and Education journal resources that are relevant to this course.
• Choosing Media Strategically for Team Communications

www.groupjazz.com/pdf/choices.pdf

• Mobilize Global Virtual Teams by Avoiding 8 Common Landmines

www.ittoday.info/ITPerformanceImprovement/Articles/Landmines.htm

• Starting up a Virtual Team (in particular the section on Communication Practices and Protocols)

www.teambuildinginc.com/article_virtual.htm

http://biztoolkit.blogspot.com/2008/01/5-tips-for-effective-virtual-team.html

Demonstrate Your Learning

Your task is to:

As a team, follow and document the problem solving cycle to think and research about what is important for a team to communicate effectively and efficiently. All members should share their ideas on the discussion forum under an appropriate thread, in order to:

1. Develop and present the second part of the Code of Conduct (A.2 Communication Strategy) which your team will follow during the semester. This should outline the procedures and standards for how the team will communicate optimally. The team should therefore consider issues including (but not restricted to) how and when the team will meet, how to communicate effectively and efficiently, how to communicate in a virtual environment, etc. You may use tables or other figures, where appropriate, to present this information.
2. Justify, using evidence from research literature, why and how these procedures and strategies will help your team to communicate effectively. Using excerpts from your team’s discussions, explain why these strategies are suitable for the needs and characteristics of your team in particular.

For this report task, marks will be awarded on the quality of your interaction, the participation of all your team members, and how much you have followed the problem solving cycle. This needs to be explicitly demonstrated, which could be in the form of evidence from the discussion forums, meeting minutes, etc. supplied in an Appendix in your report (and therefore referenced within your report). References to the research literature, using the Harvard AGPS style, are expected to be included within your discussion posts and the Code.

Part B – Project Management 37% (55 marks)

While project management normally has more aspects than that included here, for this Team Report you are only required to complete the following two sub-parts, Project Choice and Time Management Plan.

Part B.1 - Project Choice

Your Learning

This semester the technical projects are being completed using the Engineers Without Borders (EWB) design areas/topics. Your team will have been formed based on the preference of its members for one of the design areas from the EWB Challenge 2015 list:

1. Water Supply
2. Sanitation & Hygiene
3. Energy
4. Food Transformation
5. Transport
6. Infrastructure and Urban Planning
7. Waste Management
8. Climate Change
9. ICT

As a team, you should now select a specific design project from within your broad design area. Read and analyse the projects and documentation available, and look at the course objectives found in the Course Specifications (on StudyDesk). Think about the skill and knowledge sets you have that you can discuss with your team (obtained from your reflections in Portfolio 1). How will you use them so that all team members meet the objectives of the course and their personal learning goals?

IMPORTANT – At this stage you are only choosing a design project from within one of the design areas (refer Figure 3). You should NOT start proposing actual solutions for the project; that will be done in Report 3.

Demonstrate Your Learning

Your task is to:

As a team, decide on a design project from within your EWB design area and report on:

1. Which design project your team has chosen;
2. Why your team has chosen this project;
3. What relevant previous experience each team member has in the project area;
4. How members of the team can contribute to the project;
5. How mentoring and peer assistance can take place in the team (sharing skills and knowledge); and
6. How team members can be given the opportunity to meet the course objectives and their personal learning goals?

Tip: As you can see from the marking criteria in Table 4 (below), it will be best to try to group your answer in terms of what factors were taken into consideration and how members’ needs will be met.

Part B.2 – Time Management Plan

Your Learning

Your team should have a plan on how it will make the deadlines for Team Reports 2 and 3, as well as meet all the team and individual goals. While at this level of course a full Project Management Plan isn’t required, you should still implement a Time Management Plan (TMP) or Work Breakdown Structure (WBS). Prior to commencing your TMP, you should apply the problem solving cycle to ensure a clear plan is produced that prevents 'bottlenecks' from affecting your project. The PSC should produce a list of tasks, including definite deadlines for each task.

Your TMP should relate to how the team will reach the project solution, not just the completion of the Reports, so it should account for the processes as well as the tasks that the team will need to follow. This Plan will then help your Facilitator ensure participation by all team members.

Consider:

• For each team task required to produce the project report, how can you identify what is required, what the team already knows, what you need to find out, how you can apply the new knowledge, and the effectiveness of the new knowledge?
• What sections can you leave blank to be determined as you go along and what downstream effects might this have? What level of detail can you go into in your planning at this point in time? Should your plan include revisiting required deadlines and tasks at a later time?
• The team is responsible for the report. You should factor in sufficient time not only for collating, proof reading and editing the report, but also critiquing by all team members.
• The processes and tasks may change over time as you brainstorm and refine your solutions and further focus the team efforts, but compiling an overall plan now will provide a method to plan what has to be done and help determine if you have time to investigate all the alternatives or information you may potentially find.
• You will need to factor in contingency plans (e.g. team member A does not or cannot complete a task, or one task turns out to be more complex or involved than originally thought). It also makes sense to consider members’ personal study timetables.
• You will need to factor in mentoring and time to achieve personal learning goals (this may affect task allocation).
• Simply dividing tasks for members to work on separately might seem simple and sufficient, but developing the design solution and writing the Reports in a genuinely collaborative process ensures a better quality outcome. With this in mind, your Plan should organise tasks so that the team always has the chance to work together on each aspect of the design process and the production of the Report. This approach will produce a better result with more depth of justification in terms of both the quality of your design and the clarity of your Report.
• Some tasks can’t be completed until previous tasks have been and some may need to be repeated a number of times in the process. Figure 4 shows how the Background needs to be researched before the Design Objectives can be formulated, and so on. Make sure you allow for this in your task allocation.

Demonstrate Your Learning

Your task is to:

Consider the key Project Report sections in Table 5 (below) to produce a Time Management Plan or Work Breakdown Structure, factoring in all the considerations discussed above in order to clearly demonstrate your learning in this area.

As well as a work plan showing completion dates and task allocation to individuals and subgroups, you should also clearly show how the distribution of tasks will encourage mentoring and accomplishment of personal learning goals.

Make it clear how you have applied the problem solving cycle to identify what you know and what areas you need to find out more information about. This can be done at different scales, i.e. for the whole report itself, and then also for components within the report.

Table 5: An example of the final Technical Report (Part A) structure

Reference List

Boud, D 1985, ‘Problem-based learning in perspective’ in D Boud (ed.), Problem-Based Learning in Education for the Professions, Higher Education Research Society of Australasia, Sydney,  pp. 13-18.

Driscoll, DM & Hoffman, WM 2000, Ethics matters: how to implement values-driven management, Bentley College Center for Business Ethics, Pennsylvania, p.77.

Problem based learning n.d., Study Guides and Strategies, viewed 25 February 2011, <www.studygs.net/pbl.htm>.

Verenikina, I  2003, Understanding scaffolding and the ZPD in Educational Research, Faculty of Education, University of Wollongong, NSW, Australia, viewed 26 February 2011, <http://www.aare.edu.au/03pap/ver03682.pdf>.

Vygotsky's Sociocultural theory n.d., United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, viewed 25 February 2011, <http://portal.unesco.org/education/en/ev.php-URL_ID=26925&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html>.