Gender and Collaboration

Communication Styles in the Engineering Classroom

Sandra Ingram, Anne Parker

As more women enter male-dominated faculties such as engineering, there is a growing need to understand the set of social processes that impact upon them and the continuing need for curriculum reform. This understanding is crucially important for engineering students because of the increasing demand put on them to work in team-based environments in which they will need the collaborative skills of shared interaction, decision-making and responsibility.