From Initiators to Free-Riders: Exploring the Spectrum of Female Engineering Students’ Functional Roles in ProjectBased Learning using Phenomenography

Collaborative learning has been proposed as a strategy to improve engineering female students’ learning by providing the opportunities to work in a supportive group. However, female students still face multiple challenges especially in a maledominant group. To gain a deeper understanding on female students’ team experiences and thereby improve their performance, this research investigates the spectrum of team roles among female engineering students in project-based learning. Using a phenomenographic approach, which features investigating the variation of experiences, we mapped twenty-one female engineering students’ diverse roles in three dimensions-task, social, and individual roles in a qualitative manner. A variety of roles were identified, ranging from initiators, task assistants, to task outsiders (task), from coordinators, conflict mediators, communication outsiders (social), and from challenger-lovers, recognition-seekers, to free-riders (individual). Moreover, factors such as gender ratio and group dynamics, were found to be associated with their role-taking. The exploration of female students’ functional roles provided an overall understanding about the diversity in female students’ functional roles and associated factors influencing their role-taking. Suggestions as related to group arrangement, task division and other aspects in PBL were discussed for future course design.