Improving Project-Based Team Learning
Solutions for guiding your student groups to success
How this will help
As many instructors know, making teamwork work isn’t always easy. Internal conflict, personality clashes, and uneven task distribution are a few of the issues that can emerge during group project work.
With solid planning and thoughtful design, instructors can help teams tackle common challenges – or avoid them altogether.
Managing Teams
How can instructors help set teams up for success?
Instructors can encourage team engagement by providing clear expectations, time in class to collaborate, and ample resources for students. Important considerations include:
Allow class time for groups to get to know one another and create a team contract. Icebreakers can help start the conversation. For example, “What’s the most valuable skill you bring to teamwork?” or “What knowledge area would you like to expand during this class?”
Team contracts are a great way to set expectations and prepare teams for success. Here is an example from the Tandem teamwork support tool:
Communication Plan
How would you like to communicate with each other?
- Text messaging
- Slack
- Other
Next, talk about your communication ground rules. Which ground rules would you like to follow? Choose as many as you want.
- When working as a group, we give everyone a chance to talk and avoid side discussions.
- We take time to explain ideas and information so that the whole team understands fully before making a decision or moving on to another topic.
- We all respond to group emails by the end of the next day. We don’t expect everyone to be available to respond to messages at the same time, especially very early or very late.
- We will communicate personal schedule changes promptly and clearly.
- We will wait for all team members to have a chance to weigh in before we consider something “decided.”
- We will be respectful of everyone’s ideas, even when we disagree.
- We will remember that everyone comes from different backgrounds or has different skills. All of us have something to contribute.
- We will not ridicule, embarrass, or punish each other for asking questions, raising concerns, or making mistakes.
- We ask each other for feedback and provide constructive criticism.
- When there are misunderstandings, we assume positive intentions.
- Other
Make sure the requirements of the group project are clear and that students know what they need to do to succeed. When students know they will be accountable to present, share their ideas, or hand something in, it can help keep them focused and working together on the task at hand.
How can instructors help teams deal with conflict?
Learners can gain valuable lessons when working through difficult situations as a team, though faculty may still need to intervene and offer support. Important strategies include:
Prepare for conflict resolution: Have each team develop a conflict resolution plan early in the semester. Here is an example:
How to address issues
How will you handle issues when they arise? Choose all that apply.
- When an issue arises, we will use the “difficult conversations” tool to talk things through.
- We will meet as a team and avoid having tough conversations in email or text.
- We will raise the issue as soon as it happens and not let things build up.
- We will use direct communication. We won’t talk about issues behind our teammates’ backs.
- We will use kind words and communicate clearly and openly.
- We will ask for help from our instructor or GSI when we are having trouble addressing issues as a team.
- Other
Practice conflict management skills: Provide in-class, lower-stakes opportunities for conflict resolution training, which can not only prevent future issues, but also helps build positive team culture.
Consider your threshold for intervening: Be ready to provide mediation and support as needed if you see red flags, or if there are conflicts the team can’t handle on their own.
- TIP: Tailor your mediation. Consider whether the conflict is related to logistics, equal workloads, or sharing ideas, and use that information to determine if intervention is warranted.
Think about project roles: If a student tends to take over tasks, it may help to assign rotating group roles, such as note taker or facilitator, to ensure all teammates are getting exposure to different tasks.
Allow for peer feedback: Sometimes students need to hear some hard truths from their teammates to improve their teamwork abilities. Give teams a chance to share feedback with you as well as their peers. Anonymous feedback will be more honest, and should also be reviewed for appropriateness before sharing.
- TIP: Use Google Forms or Qualtrics surveys. Have each student write a few sentences about fellow teammates’ strengths and growth areas.
Assessing Teams
What is the best way to document productivity coming from the group?
Keeping tabs on individual and team outputs can help ensure the fair assessment of a group project. Important considerations include:
- Require group logs or progress reports that specify contributions by teammates and task completion.
- Use collaborative tools like shared documents that track individual edits and contributions.
- Allow for peer feedback and self-assessment at multiple timepoints during the project.
How do instructors assess if all members contribute to a project?
Accountability within the team is critical to team success and equitable learning outcomes, but we know that students will sometimes underperform and let their team down.
In most cases, we recommend assigning the same score to all team members on all team assignments. Incentives should push students to encourage teammates to contribute equally. However, in rare cases, instructors may feel a need to “scale” or otherwise adjust individuals’ scores based on performance
Reducing student grades based on peer feedback can be tricky. If students know their feedback might hurt a teammate’s grade, they may be less likely to report issues. It may help to assure students that grade reductions are made with a full evaluation of facts, not just peer feedback.
- Set clear expectations: Let students know they will be rated by teammates on how they contribute. This may help discourage free-riding.
- Check the facts: Seek corroboration from multiple members of the team about issues.
- Ask for a self-assessment: Ask the student in question how they feel about their performance and level of contribution. This may help you determine if they are aware/unaware of their performance issue and whether they are free-riding or struggling for other reasons.
- Gather data: Collect qualitative and quantitative data about team member performance (peer and self ratings) to help limit bias. You can collect this information through Google Forms or Qualtrics surveys.
Practical Tips
- Collect feedback from students: Create a survey and track team perceptions about their experience, task distribution, team equity, etc., at several points during the semester. For example, two weeks in, mid-project, and one more before the project is complete. This way, there will be fewer surprises from teams with challenges. Sample questions to ask in the survey can include:
- What does _ do well?
- What could they improve?
- How much did they contribute to _ part of the project?
- Encourage data-driven adjustments: Teamwork data can help inform changes to team and project structure, as well as “in-the-moment interventions” (for example, if many teams are struggling with finding time to meet, you could choose to offer class time for students to work together).
Resources
- Offer conflict resolution skill-building materials to students, such as the LARA Action steps from the Office of Student Conflict Resolution.
- Icebreaker ideas for teams
- 14 Conflict Resolution Activities for Workplace Team Building
