From Individual Growth to Group Benefit: Developing Teamwork Competencies in Project-Based Collaborative Engineering Education

The demands of the contemporary workplace increasingly require engineering students to have developed teamwork-related competencies by the time of their graduation. This study therefore examines the effectiveness of a collaborative projectbased learning approach in developing teamwork competencies in an engineering technology bachelor program. A mixed-methods approach was used, including selfassessment rubrics and reflections from personal development process (PDP) eportfolios. The results show no significant differences in self-assessment scores between first-year and third-year students. However, qualitative analysis of the PDP eportfolios reveals that third-year students demonstrate a more critical and well-rounded understanding of teamwork and collaboration competencies. The findings suggest that the combination of professional competencies seminars and group projects with authentic problems can effectively develop teamwork skills. This research has implications for the design of project-based collaborative learning approaches in engineering education and the assessment of teamwork competencies.