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Abstract Although teamwork is being integrated throughout engineering education because of the perceived benefits of teams, the construct of psychological safety has been largely ignored in engineering research. This omission is unfortunate because psychological safety reflects collective perceptions about how comfortable team members feel in sharing their perspectives, and it has been found to positively impact team performance in samples outside of engineering. While prior research has indicated that psychological safety is positively related to team performance and outcomes, research related to psychological safety in engineering teams is less established. There is also a lack of comprehensive methodologies that capture the dynamic changes that occur throughout the design process and at each time point. In light of this, the goal of the current study was to understand how psychological safety might be measured practically and reliably in engineering student teams over time. In addition, we sought to identify factors that impact the building and waning of psychological safety in these teams over time. This was accomplished through a study with 260 engineering students in 68 teams in a first-year engineering design class. The psychological safety of the teams was captured for each team over five time points over the course of a semester long design project. The results of this study provide some of the first evidence on the reliability of psychological safety in engineering teams and offer insights as to how to support and improve psychological safety. 

Abstract While psychological safety is a consistent, generalizable, and multilevel predictor of outcomes in team performance across fields that can positively impact the creative process, there have been limited investigations of psychological safety in the engineering domain. Without this knowledge, we do not know whether fostering psychological safety in a team environment is important for specific engineering design outputs from concept generation and screening practices. This study provides one of the first attempts at addressing this research gap through an empirical study with 69 engineering design student teams over the course of 4- and 8-week design projects. Specifically, we sought to identify the role of psychological safety on the number and quality (judged by goodness) of ideas generated. In addition, we explored the role of psychological safety on ownership bias and goodness in the concept screening process. The results of the study identified that while psychological safety was negatively related to the number of ideas a team developed, it was positively related to the quality (goodness) of the ideas developed. This result indicates that while psychological safety may not increase team productivity in terms of the number of ideas produced, it may impact team effectiveness in coming up with viable candidate ideas to move forward in the design process. In addition, there was no relationship between psychological safety and ownership bias during concept screening. These findings provide quantitative evidence on the role of psychological safety on engineering team idea production and identify areas for further study. 

There is growing evidence on the importance of psychological safety, or how comfortable participants feel in sharing their opinions and ideas in a team, in engineering team performance. However, how to support it in engineering student teams has yet to be explored. The goal of this study was to investigate whether a video intervention with assigned roles could foster psychological safety in student engineering teams. In addition, we sought to explore the impact of the frequency of the videos and the utility of the roles on the self-efficacy of students and the perceived psychological safety of the team. Specifically, this study introduces video interventions and the four lenses of psychological safety (Turn-Taking Equalizer, Point of View Shifter, Affirmation Advocate, and Creativity Promoter), and seeks to determine their effectiveness at increasing psychological safety self-efficacy and individual levels of psychological safety. A pilot study was completed with 54 participants (36 males, 17 females, 1 non-binary/third gender) enrolled in a cornerstone engineering design course. Over 10 weeks, data was collected at 5 time points. The results present four key findings. Most notably, 1) a video educating all students about psychological safety in general was effective in improving psychological safety self-efficacy and students retained this information to the end of the project;2) intervention groups taught to use the four lenses did not have a statistically significant higher level of psychological safety than non- intervention groups; and 3) intervention groups perceived the use of the lenses to increase psychological safety. These results provide a baseline understanding that is needed to support psychological safety including: when to intervene, how to intervene, and how frequently to intervene. 

Research on psychological safety has been growing in recent years due to its role in promoting creativity and innovation, among other items. This is because teams with high levels of psychological safety feel safe to express ideas and opinions. While we are becoming more aware of the importance of psychological safety in teaming, there is limited evidence in how to facilitate or build it within teams, particularly in an educational context. This paper was developed to respond to this research void by identifying the impact of teaming interventions aimed at improving psychological safety in engineering design student teams. Specifically, we studied two cohorts of students in a cornerstone design class (N = 414 students), one who received a series of video interventions and introduced role playing (intervention) and one who did not (control). These role assignments — referred to as the Lenses of Psychologically Safety - were created to promote key leadership attributes that have been shown to be crucial in facilitating psychologically safe teams. To compare the utility of the intervention, Psychological Safety was gathered at 5 key time points of a multi-week design project. The results identified three key findings. First, the interventions were successful in increasing psychological safety in engineering teams. In addition, the results indicated the utility of the Lenses of Psychological Safety throughout the design process. Finally, the results identified that groups who used these lenses had higher perceptions of Psychological Safety in their teams. Overall, these results indicated that psychological safety can be improved in engineering education through the intervention methods described within. 

Psychological safety and turn-taking have both been listed as key factors needed for collaboration in teams to emerge. Specifically, prior work has shown that increased communication in teams can lead to high psychological safety. Prior work on turn-taking as a measure of communication has mostly focused on its inclusivity in a team rather than its frequency. While the gender composition of the team can impact both participation as well as team psychological safety, there is a lack of research at the individual level. As such, this study provides the first attempt at connecting turn-taking, gender, and psychological safety through the analysis of members of fifteen engineering design student teams during the concept generation stage of their project. Specifically, we gathered video data to study how the number of turns and self- turns in a team impact psychological safety at both the individual and the team levels. We also examined how gender impacts participation and individual perceptions of psychological safety. The results found that turns and self-turns have a significant positive impact on an individual’s perception of the team’s psychological safety. However, no such relationship was found at the team level, indicating that there may be additional underlying factors in team level psychological safety. While we found that gender did not impact individual turn-taking, it did affect an individual’s perception of their psychological safety. These results provide quantitative evidence of the role of team communication on psychological safety. 

Improving team interactions in engineering to model gender inclusivity has been at the forefront of many initiatives in both academia and industry. However, there has been limited evidence on the impact of gender-diverse teams on psychological safety. This is important because psychological safety has been shown to be a key facet for the development of innovative ideas, and has also been shown to be a cornerstone of effective teamwork. But how does the gender diversity of a team impact the development of psychological safety? The current study was developed to explore just this through an empirical study with 38 engineering design student teams over the course of an 8-week design project. These teams were designed to be half heterogeneous (either half-male and half-female, or majority male) or other half homogeneous (all male). We captured psychological safety at five time points between the homogenous and heterogenous teams and also explored individual dichotomous (peer-review) ratings of psychological safety at the end of the project. Results indicated that there was no difference in psychological safety between gender homogenous and heterogenous teams. However, females perceived themselves as more psychologically safe with other female team members compared to their ratings of male team members. Females also perceived themselves to be less psychologically safe with male team members compared to male ratings of female team members, indicating a discrepancy in perceptions between genders. These results point to the need to further explore the role of minoritized groups in psychological safety research and to explore how this effect presents itself (or is covered up) at the team level. 

This paper investigates team psychological safety (N=34 teams) in a synchronous online engineering design class spanning 4 weeks. While work in this field has suggested that psychological safety in virtual teams can facilitate knowledge-sharing, trust among teams, and overall performance, there have been limited investigations of the longitudinal trajectory of psychological safety, when the construct stabilizes in a virtual environment, and what factors impact the building of psychological safety in virtual teams. The results of this study identified that the construct of psychological safety took more time to become a reliable construct in virtual design teams, but once it stabilized, it did not change. Additionally, qualitative findings point to issues with communication and conflict across various stages of the design process in the development of psychological safety. Finally, we identify potential interventions to enhance team mental model development in the early phases of virtual teaming to support team psychological safety. 

Nearly 60 years ago, Thomas Kuhn revolutionized how we think of scientific discovery and innovation when he identified that scientific change can occur in incremental developments that improve upon existing solutions, or it can occur as drastic change in the form of a paradigm shift. In engineering design, both types of scientific change are critical when exploring the solution space. However, most methods of examining design outputs look at whether an idea is creative or not and not the type of creativity that is deployed or if we can predict what types of individuals or teams is more likely to develop a paradigm-shifting idea. Without knowing how to identify who will generate ideas that fit a certain paradigm, we do not know how to build teams that can develop ideas that better explore the solution space. This study provides the first attempt at answering this question through an empirical study with 60 engineering design student teams over the course of a 4- and 8-week design project. Specifically, we sought to identify the role of cognitive style using KAI score, derived from Kirton’s Adaption-Innovation (A-I) theory, on the paradigm-relatedness of ideas generated by individuals and teams. We also sought to investigate the role of crowdsourcing for measuring the paradigm-relatedness of design solutions. The results showed that KAI was positively related to a greater likelihood of an individual’s idea being categorized as paradigm-breaking. In addition, the team KAI diversity was also linked to a greater likelihood of teams’ ideas being categorized as paradigm-challenging. Finally, the results support the use of crowdsourcing for measuring the paradigm-relatedness of design solutions. 

Psychological safety has been shown to be a consistent, generalizable, and multilevel predictor of outcomes in performance and learning across fields. While work in this field has suggested that psychological safety can impact the creative process, particularly in the generation of ideas and in the discussions surrounding idea development, there has been limited investigations of psychological safety in the engineering domain. Without this knowledge we do not know when to fostering psychological safety in a team environment is most important. This study provides the first attempt at answering this question through an empirical study with 53 engineering design student teams over the course of a 4- and 8-week design project. Specifically, we sought to identify the role of psychological safety on the number and quality (judged by goodness) of ideas generated. In addition, we explored the role of psychological safety on ownership bias and goodness in the concept screening process. The results of the study identified that while psychological safety was not related to the number of ideas a team developed, it was positively related to the quality (goodness) of the ideas developed. In addition, while no relationship was found between psychological safety and ownership bias during concept screening, the results showed that teams with high psychological safety selected a higher percentage of their team members ideas. 

Although teamwork is being integrated throughout engineering education because of the perceived benefits of teams, the construct of psychological safety has been largely ignored in engineering research. This omission is unfortunate, because psychological safety reflects collective perceptions about how comfortable team members feel in sharing their perspectives and it has been found to positively impact team performance in samples outside of engineering. Engineering team research has also been crippled by “snap-shot” methodologies and the resulting lack of investigation into the dynamic changes that happen within a team over course projects. This is problematic, because we do not know when, how, or what type of interventions are needed to effectively improve “t-shaped” engineering skills like teamwork, communication, and engaging successfully in a diverse team. In light of these issues, the goal of the current study was to understand how psychological safety might be measured practically and reliably in engineering student teams over time. In addition, we sought to identify the trajectory of psychological safety for engineering design student teams and identify the potential factors that impact the building and waning of psychological safety in these teams. This was accomplished through a 4-week study with 12 engineering design teams where data was captured at six time points. The results of this study present some of the first evidence on the reliability of psychological safety in engineering student populations. The results also help begin to answer some difficult fundamental questions on supporting team performance in engineering education.