Abstract:

There are unlikely to be many university students who have not at some point had to work in a team as part of a project. The justification for this is likely to be the need for students to develop teamworking skills, in part, to prepare them for the workplace. However, it is questionable the extent to which students are aware of the specific skills they should be developing and what behaviours are expected for effective teamworking. Even more questionable is the extent to which educators help students develop these skills and observe and assess the associated behaviours. This paper aims to draw upon the academic literature and the experiences of and research undertaken by the paper’s author to outline a proposed framework for how to enable, encourage, observe and assess effective teamworking skills in students.

There is a general acceptance of the need to develop student’s team-working skills to enhance employability (Universities UK, 2016). Within the academic literature on collaborative 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 presents 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).

Increasing educators are turning to technology to assist with team-based projects, however a study by Witney & Smallbone (2011) found that most students reported that 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 draws upon the experiences of the paper’s author in three UK Universities and a range of undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. The author has increasingly focused on how to create learning environments that support collaboration and has incorporated online tools such as Basecamp (an online project management and collaboration tool) into their programmes. Through their experiences, the paper’s author has developed guidance for best practice when designing modules and assessments that include team-based projects, these have now been developed into a proposed framework for how to enable, encourage and monitor teamworking skills in students.

Key aspects of this best practice framework include:
• Identifying effective team-working skills to be developed
• Identifying expected behaviours related to the skills
• How to use technology to create an environment for collaboration and development of the skills and expected behaviours
• How to encourage students to exhibit the expected behaviours
• How to monitor the team-working behaviours
• How to assess the development of teamworking skills
• Guidance on dealing with negative teamworking behaviours

Overall, the paper will enable educators to reflect on their own practices and evaluate the extent to which they can adopt aspects of the best practice guidance and proposed framework to develop their students’ teamworking skills.

Keywords:

Teamwork, groups, skills, behaviours, collaboration, technology.