Student Teams – A Formal Cooperative Learning Strategy

“Heterogeneity within teams and homogeneity across teams”

How you create the student teams is a critical first step in providing an optimal learning experience for your students. Below are areas for your decisions.

Important attributes for a team:

Skill sets needed for the team projects: Below are some of the skills to consider:

• Technical or functional expertise – e.g., writing ability, research and computational skills, knowledge of excel spreadsheets.
• Interpersonal skills – e.g., listening, providing feedback, being observant, communication skills
• Problem-solving or decision-making skills – e.g., able to identify problems, lead a brain-storming session, prioritize tasks.
• Additional skills – any that you think may be critical for a successful team project
• How do you gather this information? You can ask the students for a (a) a demographic survey; (b) an information sheet, (c) an instrument such as Real Colors, or (d) your early observation of interactions and behaviors by your students

Demographic information: additional factors to consider are:

• Gender
• Ethnicity/Race
• Major

After forming the teams, look back over the teams to ensure that all the teams are similar in creation, but within the teams, the members and their attributes are diverse.

Size: an optimal size is between 3 to 5 members. Sometimes in capstone courses, there maybe slightly larger teams. In those instances, think about breaking this larger team initially into smaller working teams to build team skills and then put them back together to continue working on the team project

Formation: there are a number of ways in which to form a team. While given a choice, students will naturally want to be with their friends; however, this is not a recommended strategy. Selecting friends may result in a team with similar skills and attitudes. An outcome of such a team is “group think.” Consider some of the following ways to form your student teams:

• Random selection: such as drawing names or using a random number generator
• Combination of Instructor and Student Choice: sometimes, especially in upper level courses, students want an opportunity to choose their own team member. In this method, after learning about the importance of complementary skills, the students pair up based on finding a colleague with complementary, but not similar, skills. The instructor then selects specific pairs or triads to form a team.
• Apply and Interview: for this strategy, ask your students if they would like to “apply” to be the team facilitator (this is a more collegial term than team leader). Have those students write a letter of application. You select as many team facilitators as teams you will need. Then ask the remaining students to write a letter of application to be a team member. The team facilitators will then select their team members based on the best practice of creating a team with complementary (not similar) skills
• Instructor-selected: using the available information that you solicited from your students (see “Important attributes for team), identity and select the students for each team.

Building Accountability in the Student Team

Many of us include on their syllabi, building team skills as a learning outcome; however, college students (and adults) are not typically trained in effective team skills. As an illustration, while teams place a high priority on effort, the individual team members may differ on how they define effort.

Thus, an important first step for a team is to identify key characteristics for an effective team. You can provide the following ones for your teams:

• Attendance
• Timeliness
• Collaboration
• Effort
• Contribution of skills and resources
• Contribution of ideas
• And any others you deem important

The next step is for the teams to define these characteristics. Request that the teams define these characteristics concretely and objectively. For an example, to define timeliness, it is not sufficient to say “be on time.” A more appropriate definition would be to be to state “on the dot”, or within 5 minutes of set time. During this exercise, the students are beginning to “norm” or standardize their collective definition of these characteristics. This is an important step in the later feedback and assessment procedures.

A first team assignment after this exercise is for each team to submit a team contract. It is a good practice to have the students define the team characteristics during class and have them complete this work later. This document of the effective team characteristics is called a team contract (or sometimes called a team charter). Each of the team members should read and sign this document and submit it within a week.

Participation

Assessing Effective Teams and Team Members Frequently

Frequent checking in on your student teams is essential for a successful experience. There are three areas to assess: the individual team member, the whole team, and the team assignment. Of course, providing time during the class periods for students to work on their team projects will provide invaluable informal observations. It is suggested that in the final peer evaluation form that a few points from the team project be allocated for individual assessment. Many faculty meet with each of the teams after the initial feedback; during these meetings, it is helpful to bring back their contracts to review.

Here are several forms that you may use or modify to assess the student teams:

• The team process and team product <insert sample form>
• The self-peer feedback <insert sample form>
• The final peer evaluation <insert sample form>