Guidelines for Student Teams
Overview
Why do we use teams? First, we do it to improve learning. The more students think, write, talk, and argue about course content the better they learn. Teams provide more opportunities for them to do that. Research indicates that learning in teams increases abilities to retain and use knowledge.
Second, we do it to prepare students for the kinds of teamwork required to use information technology to solve problems. Stakeholders say our graduates need to be able to work in teams and cooperate with others to succeed. The more students experience the trials and triumphs of collaborative work the better prepared they will be to join the workforce.
In IST students participate in many team exercises and projects throughout the semester and the curriculum. Students must manage those teams themselves. This presents unique problems for instructors in forming teams, designing tasks, managing teams, assessing teams and ensuring that both students and instructors reap rewards for their efforts. Instructors deal with learning team problems with ingenious but crude practices. Based on experience, these guidelines highlight trade-offs rather than prescribe standards. We need more research to find optimal ways to design and manage successful learning teams.
Team Formation
Size
The two issues in forming teams are size and selection. Size determines what kind of assignments teams can do successfully, how often and where they meet, and what kind of management they need. Effective groups require diverse sets of appropriate skills. Team size and member selection determines team effectiveness, difficulty of scheduling meetings and team dynamics. In terms of size, larger teams (5 or more) require demanding assignments and more instructor attention. Smaller teams (4 or less) require more personnel re-assignments to assure adequate resources. Because of scheduling difficulties larger teams require more in-class time.
Trade-offs:
- The larger the team the greater the available range of skills and talents, which requires more difficult and complex assignments. The logistics of outside meetings becomes burdensome.
- The smaller the team the less the range of skills, which requires easier and simpler assignments. The logistics of outside meetings is easier.
Selection
In team member selection, diverse talents and viewpoints make teams more effective but also complicate team dynamics. Instructors need to collect information and assign team members based on the specific characteristics important to success in their course. In advanced courses students can help with the selection process.
Trade-offs:
- The more homogeneous the team the more likely students will equally share the workload but this can create invidious competition among teams.
- The more heterogeneous the team the more complimentary skills available but the greater the temptation for students to divide assignments in ways that avoid learning new skills and knowledge. Warning: If the range of skills is too great students who need the most work get neglected and learn less.
Task Design
A good problem or project design is the single most important determinate of successful team learning. Research projects reported in long complex papers work best for individuals. If assigned to teams, sensible students will divide the projects so they can work alone. Individuals will learn limited material unless they take over the project. Thus, ambitious students will do most of the work and poor students will do the least. Teamwork becomes a burden and a source of irritation. Assignments that work best for teams require the use of course content to make decisions that can be reported in a short simple form. Decision assignments require interaction and make teamwork and discussion the natural and rational way to do the work.
A well-designed team assignment will also make individual tasks visible by requiring student preparation - reading, summarizing and interpreting material - and make it easy for individuals to be accountable. Such assignments will demand a range of skills and knowledge beyond what an individual could know or master.
For example, contrast these two assignments:
- Explain the major parts of an object-oriented language.
- A start-up company wants us to invest in their plan to market an object-oriented version of COBOL. Should we invest in it?
The first simple assignment has little task interdependence (save for final assembly), no task visibility (save for some notion that there is more than one part to explain), and no task variety (the assignment requires students to look up and report). It doesn't demand much discussion, making it less likely that teamwork time will be interesting or productive.
The second decision assignment is complex, has high task interdependence (in order for the team to answer the question, they need to pull together a range of evidence), high task variety (technical comparison between structured and object language, making a business case, what is COBOL, what is object oriented language), and demands students to demonstrate a range of skills. This assignment requires much discussion and sharing of information making it more likely that teamwork time will be useful and exciting.
Team Management
Instructors cannot form teams and just hope for the best. Team management requires planning, attentiveness, and give-and-take. Instructors should coach and not dictate to help teams develop a cohesion that maximizes the usefulness of differences and disagreements. Students must know that they can bring their team problems to the instructor for support and receive an appropriate level of help.
The Work Process
The first major management issue for instructors is the day-to-day supervision of the work process. Every team task has a cycle in which drift, misdirection, and last minute frenzy prevail. This cycle expands or contracts according to the allotted chunk of time. Smaller chunks with more deliverables keep students on task but restrict freedom to learn from mistakes and increase the grading load for instructors and stress for students. Larger chunks allow students to explore the deeper structure of problems, reduce grading load and student stress but can promote drift, digressions and superficial treatment of the assigned material.
Trade-offs:
- The more structure and frequent deadlines the more students focus, but also the more stress which triggers the reversion to rote and boring performances.
- The longer the time chunk the more freedom for creativity but the more likely students will loaf, complain about lack of structure, and get involved in team dysfunctions.
Detection and Intervention
How should instructors detect and respond to dysfunctional teams? If team problems are not detected early they create havoc. Students, however, tend to ignore member problems in the hope that they will go away. Early detection of slacking, personality clashes, and power plays leads to easier solutions. Instructors need to actively observe, listen, and interact with teams to become aware of their situations. They should encourage students to monitor, manage, and develop creative ways to deal with the beginnings of conflicts. In class teamwork makes this more feasible.
Intense interventions by and instructor (like firing students to work individually) can be immediately successful but encourages student dependency. More useful is a strategy of creating rules and structures that enables teams to self-manage. Instructors should encourage teams to work out their differences in a way that fits their unique identity. Unresolved and festering conflicts can send teams in to spiraling disasters especially if students do not have the experience or skills to confront and resolve the issues. If that happens, the instructor has to be proactive and intervene to take charge of the situation.
Trade-offs:
- The more closely you monitor teams the more likely you will detect problems early enough for treatment but the less likely students will learn necessary people and management skills.
- The more forcefully you intervene in team problems the more likely you can settle issues quickly but the more learned helplessness you may encourage.
Rewards and Assessment
Rewards
The experience of learning teams ought to reward both students and instructors. Students should find results worth the trouble and know that they could not have achieved them on their own in the same time. They should also believe that the workload and assessment was fair. Instructors should see a marked improvement in student learning and gain intellectual satisfaction from successful course design. They should also find grading less onerous. Without those rewards learning teams demoralize.
Assessment
Prompt rigorous evaluations of students' performances promote successful team problem based learning. Research shows that assessment is the most important factor in student achievement. Since instructors see little of the learning process undetected misconceptions can prevail. Thus, ensuring individual accountability and maintaining team performance standards are crucial. Accountability requires individual quizzes, papers, exams, interviews or presentations. Team performance standards require grading guides (rubrics) and exemplary problem solutions. Much thought should go into designing instruments that are meaningful, effective, and easily graded. While many problems have no one right answer, there are always superior and inferior solutions to be identified, discussed, and understood.
The problem based learning curve means that early assessments results will be mediocre and later results better. To avoid discouraging students and allow them to recover from early failures, instructors should heavily weight grades later in the semester. This involves a danger that students will revert to cramming at the end. However, early honest assessment and open encouragement of creative mistakes can offset this.
Trade-offs:
- The more frequent individual assessments, the more reliable the measurement, and the less likely freeloading but the greater the grading load and the more likely that grade competition will subvert team cohesion.
- The more trivial the deliverables the easier the grading but the more student irritation at "busy work" with no improvement in measurement.
- The more difficult the deliverables the harder the grading with little or no improvement in measurement.
- The stricter the assessment the more accurate the measurement but the more likely student failures with high stress levels that inhibit student motivation.
- The more instructors rely on team assessments the more time and effort they can apply to grading but the less they know about individual learning.
Peer Assessment
Peer assessment is controversial, but can be a 'Sword of Damocles' to discourage freeloading. Under-the-table deals, blackmail, animosity, or friendship can corrupt peer evaluations. They also smack of snitching. However, instructors may gain feedback about student contributions and convey member performance standards with peer reviews. Keeping results secret using them only to identify worst offenders can avoid corruption. There are as many models of peer assessment as there are instructors. Results vary.