Teaching teamwork skills through alignment of features within a commercial board game

The importance of developing teamwork skills among engineering students is crucial, but many intervention strategies arecumbersome, time-consuming, or inappropriate for engineers. This report provides details on an intervention strategy designed toimprove teamwork skills among engineering students within the timeframe of three hours, with minimal preparation from theeducator’s point of view. The activity centers on a commercial cooperative board game,Pandemic. In cooperative games, thestudents play against the game cooperatively rather than against each other competitively. As a low-risk, self-contained activity,students self-identify the importance of good teamwork skills and the detriment of poor teamwork skills. The participants of thisstudy scored significantly higher than more senior students on a teamwork assessment instrument. In addition, they scoredsignificantly higher in the categories of communication, task planning/execution, and goal setting: all necessary skills in the game.This report also highlights the importance of aligning educational goals with features of the game to achieve its success.