Context-Sensitive Team Formation in Engineering Education: Structural Optimization of TREO-Based Assignment Across Sections with Contrasting Role Diversity Profiles

Effective team formation strategies must account for baseline behavioral diversity within student populations, yet most approaches apply uniform parameters regardless of section characteristics. This exploratory, quasi-experimental study proposes a context-sensitive framework for Team Role Experience and Orientation (TREO)-based team formation across two sections of a road geometric design course (N = 77 civil engineering undergraduates). We systematically evaluated 80 team formation configurations per section (16 thresholds × 5 group sizes) to maximize structural differentiation between role-balanced and role-redundant teams. Baseline diagnostics revealed substantial differences in role diversity, justifying independent optimization. Section A (role-redundant) achieved strong structural separation, whereas Section B (role-diverse) showed weak or negative separation across all configurations, reflecting limitations in achieving consistent complementarity contrasts. Post-project surveys assessed perceived role complementarity, team dynamics, and performance. Across both sections, perceptual differences between conditions were small and non-significant, indicating that structural role differentiation does not automatically translate into subjective team experience. However, perceptual trends varied systematically by baseline diversity, highlighting the moderating role of section composition. These findings emphasize the importance of diagnostic indices (Ref, IDR) for selecting and interpreting team formation strategies and support the use of adaptive, context-sensitive approaches in engineering education.