-
8/13/2019 Teamwork Differences Among Male and Female Engineering Students in IIUM Gombak Campus
1/21
TEAMWORK
DIFFERENCES
AMONG MALE AND
FEMALE
ENGINEERINGSTUDENTS IN IIUM
GOMBAK CAMPUS
4/25/2012
Noor Sheila binti Mohamed Roselley
0836016Section 38
-
8/13/2019 Teamwork Differences Among Male and Female Engineering Students in IIUM Gombak Campus
2/21
-
8/13/2019 Teamwork Differences Among Male and Female Engineering Students in IIUM Gombak Campus
3/21
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.
-
8/13/2019 Teamwork Differences Among Male and Female Engineering Students in IIUM Gombak Campus
4/21
Teamwork Differences Among Male And Female Engineering Students In IIUM Gombak
Campus
English for Academic Writing (EAW)-LE 4000 Section 38 Page 3
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.
-
8/13/2019 Teamwork Differences Among Male and Female Engineering Students in IIUM Gombak Campus
5/21
Teamwork Differences Among Male And Female Engineering Students In IIUM Gombak
Campus
English for Academic Writing (EAW)-LE 4000 Section 38 Page 4
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.
-
8/13/2019 Teamwork Differences Among Male and Female Engineering Students in IIUM Gombak Campus
6/21
Teamwork Differences Among Male And Female Engineering Students In IIUM Gombak
Campus
English for Academic Writing (EAW)-LE 4000 Section 38 Page 5
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.
-
8/13/2019 Teamwork Differences Among Male and Female Engineering Students in IIUM Gombak Campus
7/21
Teamwork Differences Among Male And Female Engineering Students In IIUM Gombak
Campus
English for Academic Writing (EAW)-LE 4000 Section 38 Page 6
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
-
8/13/2019 Teamwork Differences Among Male and Female Engineering Students in IIUM Gombak Campus
8/21
Teamwork Differences Among Male And Female Engineering Students In IIUM Gombak
Campus
English for Academic Writing (EAW)-LE 4000 Section 38 Page 7
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
-
8/13/2019 Teamwork Differences Among Male and Female Engineering Students in IIUM Gombak Campus
9/21
Teamwork Differences Among Male And Female Engineering Students In IIUM Gombak
Campus
English for Academic Writing (EAW)-LE 4000 Section 38 Page 8
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
-
8/13/2019 Teamwork Differences Among Male and Female Engineering Students in IIUM Gombak Campus
10/21
Teamwork Differences Among Male And Female Engineering Students In IIUM Gombak
Campus
English for Academic Writing (EAW)-LE 4000 Section 38 Page 9
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
-
8/13/2019 Teamwork Differences Among Male and Female Engineering Students in IIUM Gombak Campus
11/21
Teamwork Differences Among Male And Female Engineering Students In IIUM Gombak
Campus
English for Academic Writing (EAW)-LE 4000 Section 38 Page 10
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
Often Sometimes Occasinally Never
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
Often Sometimes Occasinally Never
NoofRespondents(Female)
Relevant to learning
objectives
Relevant to future career
Members failed to Produce
-
8/13/2019 Teamwork Differences Among Male and Female Engineering Students in IIUM Gombak Campus
12/21
Teamwork Differences Among Male And Female Engineering Students In IIUM Gombak
Campus
English for Academic Writing (EAW)-LE 4000 Section 38 Page 11
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
-
8/13/2019 Teamwork Differences Among Male and Female Engineering Students in IIUM Gombak Campus
13/21
Teamwork Differences Among Male And Female Engineering Students In IIUM Gombak
Campus
English for Academic Writing (EAW)-LE 4000 Section 38 Page 12
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
-
8/13/2019 Teamwork Differences Among Male and Female Engineering Students in IIUM Gombak Campus
14/21
Teamwork Differences Among Male And Female Engineering Students In IIUM Gombak
Campus
English for Academic Writing (EAW)-LE 4000 Section 38 Page 13
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
-
8/13/2019 Teamwork Differences Among Male and Female Engineering Students in IIUM Gombak Campus
15/21
Teamwork Differences Among Male And Female Engineering Students In IIUM Gombak
Campus
English for Academic Writing (EAW)-LE 4000 Section 38 Page 14
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
-
8/13/2019 Teamwork Differences Among Male and Female Engineering Students in IIUM Gombak Campus
16/21
Teamwork Differences Among Male And Female Engineering Students In IIUM Gombak
Campus
English for Academic Writing (EAW)-LE 4000 Section 38 Page 15
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
-
8/13/2019 Teamwork Differences Among Male and Female Engineering Students in IIUM Gombak Campus
17/21
Teamwork Differences Among Male And Female Engineering Students In IIUM Gombak
Campus
English for Academic Writing (EAW)-LE 4000 Section 38 Page 16
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.
-
8/13/2019 Teamwork Differences Among Male and Female Engineering Students in IIUM Gombak Campus
18/21
Teamwork Differences Among Male And Female Engineering Students In IIUM Gombak
Campus
English for Academic Writing (EAW)-LE 4000 Section 38 Page 17
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.
-
8/13/2019 Teamwork Differences Among Male and Female Engineering Students in IIUM Gombak Campus
19/21
Teamwork Differences Among Male And Female Engineering Students In IIUM Gombak
Campus
English for Academic Writing (EAW)-LE 4000 Section 38 Page 18
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?.TheEconomic 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,86,291-
298.
Tonso, K.L.(1996).The Impact of Cultural Norms on Women. Journal of Engineering
Education. 85(3),217225.
-
8/13/2019 Teamwork Differences Among Male and Female Engineering Students in IIUM Gombak Campus
20/21
Teamwork Differences Among Male And Female Engineering Students In IIUM Gombak
Campus
English for Academic Writing (EAW)-LE 4000 Section 38 Page 19
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 of sex differences in groupperformance.Psychological Bulletin, 102,53-71.
Wood, W., Poleck, D., &Atkin, C. (1985).Sex differences in group performance.Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology,48,63-71.
-
8/13/2019 Teamwork Differences Among Male and Female Engineering Students in IIUM Gombak Campus
21/21
Teamwork Differences Among Male And Female Engineering Students In IIUM Gombak
Campus
Appendices