Practicing What we Preach: A Multi-Disciplinary Team Teaching Multi-Disciplinary Teamwork

The Faculty of Engineering at the University of Waterloo has identified teamwork as a skill that requires immediate attention [1]. A multi-disciplinary team was assembled to address this challenge. The team is made up of members of existing faculty and support groups from across campus: representatives from a student support unit, a teaching support unit, the First Year Engineering office, engineering faculty, and graduate students. In the beginning, the team struggled with how to leverage the unique and diverse skills and perspectives which initially brought them together. This lack of cohesion around teamwork practices ultimately led to inconsistent success and reception of the first learning modules. While the learning curve for the individuals involved was steep, this challenge led the team to reflect on their teamwork skills to ‘practice what they preach.’ In this paper, the team members address what they’ve learned about assembling, and working effectively in, multi-disciplinary teams. This paper discusses the formation of the team and initiative (applying the Institutional Entrepreneurship paradigm [2]); the reception of the created modules, from the students, instructors, and team’s perspective; and highlights the immense value and challenges that exist in working within multi-disciplinary teams. The paper will also address overcoming some of the challenges around an extra-departmental group developing learning modules from the ground-up within a university environment.