Changing the Paradigm - Cheating In a Traditional Exam Setting - Into a Possible Productive Team Work Arena and the Associated Student Perception

Active learning and project-based-learning (PBL) approaches are getting great attention and acceptance to maximize learning in undergraduate education.For the success of these engagement methods, students' collaboration plays a great role, however, there are only few studies are available on an effective team formation method.The team integration and level of collaboration will directly affect the quality of the end-product as well as the amount of learning through the process.An effective team formation mechanism in Science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) programs is vital to create a strong collaboration among students and to maximize learning.In this paper, a preliminary study has been performed to investigate a possible route to build an effective collaboration among students by changing the traditional paradigm "cheating on in-class Examinations" into a possible productive team work arena; and the associated students' perception was assessed.The study has been conducted on a sophomore level, engineering course called Dynamics for Mechanical Engineers at a moderate sized research university in the Midwest U.S. In this course, a semester long project, two traditional exams, homework and in class group exercises were administered.In addition to these evaluation methods, one additional exam was administered with a fixed time as regular exams, but open for collaboration during the exam.The announcement about the exam protocol was made one month prior to the exam.At the end of the semester, a survey was conducted through Qualtrics and multiple regression was conducted to determine the predictive power of personal experiences of group tests and perceptions of group tests.The result indicates that, even though the preparation for the collaborative test helped students to come closer and develop trust among them, only individuals in the lowest competency group had a significantly higher perception of group test than individuals in the high competency group.