Examining the Longitudinal Psychological Safety of Mentored Senior Capstone Design Teams

Abstract The psychological safety of members on a team can impact outcomes during the engineering design process, where psychological safety describes to what extent a team member feels accepted and respected by the team. Engineering capstone courses (or senior design) provide an opportunity for students to interface with industry sponsors in a culminating engineering experience. This study measures team member’s psychological safety at three points during a two-semester senior design sequence (at the start, after the first semester, and after the second semester). Both individual and team psychological safety are considered. In this study, each design team is assigned a project mentor from academic and industry backgrounds to guide them throughout the process. Results show that the psychological safety of individuals does not significantly change over time. This result is consistent when comparing the type of mentor (industry-based or academia-based) assigned to each capstone team. In addition, no significant changes are observed for aggregate team psychological safety during the two-semester capstone design experience. This work contributes to an understanding of the factors that influence team members’ psychological safety during senior design courses to ultimately improve educational outcomes for undergraduate engineering students. In addition, this work provides insight into how engineering educators can promote positive collaboration between undergraduates and industry professionals through team mentorship sourced from both industry and academia.