Abstract:

This project investigates the extent to which an online project management and communication tool can be used to enable and measure effective team-working skills in students, when undertaking group projects.

There is a general acceptance within management education of the need to develop student’s team-working skills to enhance employability (Universities UK, 2016). Within the academic literature on collaborative and action learning there have been numerous studies highlighting the benefits of team working over individual and competitive learning (Johnson, Johnson & Smith (2006)) as well as the challenges it may present for both students and educators, especially around issues of non-engagement by individual students and how to distribute marks fairly (Strauss et. Al. 2014).

A significant focus of previous research has been on teamwork competencies and the performance outcomes of teams with less focus on understanding the process of developing students’ capabilities to work collaboratively and the tools that may be used to support this (Donelan & Kear, 2018).

A study by Witney & Smallbone (2011) looking at the use of wiki pages as well as other social media tools found that most students engaged in some form of online tool to support group work. Many were used informally (e.g. Facebook) whilst others were part of the university’s VLE and their use encouraged (e.g. wikis). One key finding of the study was that most students reported that the online tools were used primarily to support cooperation (the dividing of tasks and then later on the collection of work) rather than supporting collaboration (students working on tasks together throughout the module).

This study focuses on a final year management undergraduate module, where the students work in teams across the whole academic year to undertake various activities relating to entrepreneurship. Within the module, Basecamp, an online project management and communication tool, is utilised to enable the lecturer to encourage effective team-working as well as monitor how the students are performing in their teams.

The study has collected data through observation of how Basecamp has been used by each group of students as well as survey and focus group data collected from the students. Using this data, the study proposes a best practice approach of how Basecamp (and similar tools) can be used to develop specific aspects of effective team-working skills as well as monitor and measure the quality of collaboration amongst the students.

Key aspects of this approach include:
• Identifying effective team-working skills to be developed
• Utilising features of the online tool to develop specific team-working skills
• How to encourage students to use the online tools effectively
• How to use the tool to monitor team-working
• How to use the online tool to measure development of team working skills
• Evaluating the extent to which the tool developed effective team-working skills

Overall, the study should enable educators to reflect on their own practices related to student group projects and evaluate the extent to which online tools, such as Basecamp, can be used to both develop and measure their students’ team-working skills.

Keywords:

Team-working, teams, groups, skills, collaboration, teams, groups, online tools.