Name: Team Work
Problem: Students have frequent questions and need a resource in addition to the instructor.
Learning Outcome: By participating in groups, students will develop leadership and communication
skills.
Context:
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Some students are afraid of asking questions in front of the entire class but are most likely to
actively participate if they are assigned to a small group.
Most classrooms are teacher-centric, in which the questions emanate from the instructor and
most likely, so do the answers.
Project teams are the essence of today’s workplace and students need to grasp the key
strategies that make a team successful.
What You Should Do (Solution):
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Prepare students for teamwork early.
o Identify collaboration and communication as expectations in your syllabus.
o Discuss teamwork in class, using scenarios to demonstrate what makes a team good or
not so good.
Set rules for team formation. If instructor-assigned, groups may be random or based upon
student interests, skill levels, learning style. Suggested limit: teams of three to five. [GROUP
SIZE]
Require teams to create a team agreement in which roles are identified, contact information is
recorded, and tasks and deadlines are agreed upon. This can be done through an online
discussion tool.
Introduce teams to online collaborative tools (Google docs, chats, blogs, wikis, journals).
Design topics that students as a group can self-select and make these topics relevant to the
course and to their interests.[AUTHENTIC TASKS]
Integrate peer review mechanisms. To modify student views of group projects in which some do
most of the work while others do nothing, require peer review at multiple points in the project.
Students, thus, are able to provide feedback to each other and alert those who need to “catch
up “. These peer assessments can be the basis of individual grades for team assignments.
Get feedback from students on team assignments. Use this feedback from students to make
adjustments for the next semester’s projects.
For team presentations, provide students with a checklist of do’s & don’ts . Assign a short
presentation early in the semester to acclimate students to the front of the classroom.
How Do You Measure Learning? (assessment)
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Teamwork grades composed of a group grade for the group paper/presentation and an
individual grade based upon peer reviews and participation in team discussion threads.
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Students who fail to participate in any of the major project components will be penalized with a
one-grade deduction for the project.
Rubrics created by instructor for peer review, group presentation and group paper.
Assumptions (students)
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Students routinely express frustration with teamwork, where regardless of the workload,
everyone earns the same grade.
Students are ill-prepared for the demands of collaborative work and need structure and
oversight to proceed through the team assignments.
Assumptions (course design)
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Learning management systems provide a group tool to create a group forum, private discussion
threads and peer review tools.
Instructor presence in the course is demonstrated through posts on additional resources, kudos
to team members when appropriate and private emails for sensitive communications.
Instructor posts a list of typical teamwork problems and suggests solutions. Students can
reference this list throughout the semester.
Why Is This a Best Practice?
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Teamwork assignments provide students with the opportunity to develop skills in problemsolving, discussion and debate.
Students benefit from everyone’s participation and skills—not just their own.
Students demonstrate project management skills that exemplify authentic learning.
When Should You Use It?
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Introduce a simple project early in the semester so that students are introduced to collaboration
skills.
Progress to a more complex project requiring students to apply what they learned earlier in the
semester and to further develop their team skills, using face-to-face strategies and online
collaboration tools.