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Team-Building Activities to Help Students Reconnect in the Classroom

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Team-Building Activities to Help Students Reconnect in the Classroom

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Team-Building Activities to Help Students Reconnect in the Classroom

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As students return to school after a tumultuous year, here are tips to help them re-engage and ease back into the classroom.

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With Problem-Based Case Learning (PBCL), students work in teams to develop and present solutions to real-world problems. In this video from Making Learning Real, students in an IT class and their instructor talk about teamwork. The students discuss how team projects teach them to communicate and to learn from one another. The instructor values teamwork because it allows students to deal with potential real workplace issues, such as team members who do not do their work. He also states that, through the team approach, students can generate many different ways of solving problems.

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Jared Leidich: World Record Skydive Suit Engineer Talks About Failure

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Jared Leidich: World Record Skydive Suit Engineer Talks About Failure

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Jared Leidich: World Record Skydive Suit Engineer on Failure | My Path | PBS LearningMedia

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Jared Leidich talks about what big, important projects take—teamwork, communication and failure.

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Cooperative Learning Structures Can Increase Student Achievement

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Cooperative Learning Structures Can Increase Student Achievement

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kagan publishing teaching catalog teacher resources school supplies music games cooperative learning differentiated instruction educational products esl ell foreign language posters multiple intelligences textbooks math books science literature social studies

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Kagan's FREE Articles - Research & Rationale - Cooperative Learning Structures Can Increase Student Achievement

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Kagan specializes in staff development and educational resources for teachers. Visit our online store, magazine and message board the leading authority on cooperative learning, classroom discipline and multiple intelligences.

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How to Improve Your Teamwork Skills Instead of Stressing Out

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How to Improve Your Teamwork Skills Instead of Stressing Out

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How to Improve your Teamwork Skills instead of Stressing Out by Peer Connect

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The Change Up: 21 Ways to be a Good Teammate

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Teamwork Makes the Dream Work: How to Be a Great Teammate

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Teamwork Makes the Dream Work: How to Be a Great Teammate

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Authors Mark Eys, Taylor Coleman, Travis Crickard

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Teamwork Makes the Dream Work: How to Be a Great Teammate

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Teams are groups of people who work together to achieve a common goal. Maybe you play on a sports team, perform in school plays, or work on a group project for a class. These are all examples of teams. You may have heard your coach or teacher talk about the importance of teamwork and being a good teammate. Teamwork is what teams do to maximize their chances of achieving their goals, like winning a basketball game, putting on a stellar school play, or obtaining a high mark on a group assignment. Sometimes it can be difficult for people to come together and work effectively as a team. In this article, we talk about what teamwork is and how teams can improve the way they work together before, during, and after games. We also explain how teammates can support one another when faced with obstacles and conflict.

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Overcoming Obstacles | Lesson 8: Cooperation & Teamwork

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Students will be able to state why working with others can make a task easier.

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Sesame Street | Drawing Numbers With Teamwork

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Sesame Street | Drawing Numbers With Teamwork

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Sesame Street | Drawing Numbers with Teamwork | PBS KIDS

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Simple Teamwork Games | Crafts for Kids | PBS KIDS for Parents

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These two simple games use household items to help children learn the importance of cooperation and working together. Great for groups or parties!

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Sesame Street | That's Cooperation Song With Big Bird

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Sesame Street | That's Cooperation Song With Big Bird

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Sesame Street: Big Bird sings "That's Cooperation"

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25+ Engaging Team Building Activities for Students

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25+ Engaging Team Building Activities for Students

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25+ Engaging Team Building Activities for Students to Foster Collaboration | Lemonade Day

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Discover 25+ fun team building activities for students to boost collaboration, communication, and leadership skills in the classroom!

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Teaching my Kid to be a Team Player - Prepared Parents

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Collaboration is among the top five skills kids need most for future employment.

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Teamwork Skills: Being an Effective Group Member - A Checklist

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Teamwork Skills: Being an Effective Group Member - A Checklist

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Audio version of "Teamwork skills: Being an effective group member" tip sheet (MP3)
For small groups to function effectively in a course context, students must attend to both the climate within their group and the process by which they accomplish their tasks. Critical to a healthy climate and an effective process are strong communication skills. Below you will find the basic characteristics of effective communicators, plus tips to help students with group climate and process.

Although students can gain many of the skills described below through informal social interactions, they still benefit from having them made explicit. To hone their skills they also need opportunities to practice as well as to receive regular feedback on how they're doing. Share the information below with your students, use it to set activities for them, and work to incorporate three components of feedback into your plan: instructor comments (oral and/or written), reflective group discussions and/or peer assessment, and self-reflection (see the reflection prompts in Appendix A for ideas).

Communication skills

To function successfully in a small group, students need to be able to communicate clearly on intellectual and emotional levels. Effective communicators:

can explain their own ideas

express their feelings in an open but non-threatening way

listen carefully to others

ask questions to clarify others' ideas and emotions

can sense how others feel based on their nonverbal communication

will initiate conversations about group climate or process if they sense tensions brewing

reflect on the activities and interactions of their group and encourage other group members to do so as well

Regular open communication, in which group members share their thoughts, ideas, and feelings, is a must for successful group work. Unspoken assumptions and issues can be very destructive to productive group functioning. When students are willing to communicate openly with one another, a healthy climate will emerge and an effective process can be followed.

Skills for a healthy group climate

To work together successfully, group members must demonstrate a sense of cohesion. Cohesion emerges as group members exhibit the following skills:

Openness: Group members are willing to get to know one another, particularly those with different interests and backgrounds. They are open to new ideas, diverse viewpoints, and the variety of individuals present within the group. They listen to others and elicit their ideas. They know how to balance the need for cohesion within a group with the need for individual expression.

Trust and self-disclosure: Group members trust one another enough to share their own ideas and feelings. A sense of mutual trust develops only to the extent that everyone is willing to self-disclose and be honest yet respectful. Trust also grows as group members demonstrate personal accountability for the tasks they have been assigned.

Support: Group members demonstrate support for one another as they accomplish their goals. They exemplify a sense of team loyalty and both cheer on the group as a whole and help members who are experiencing difficulties. They view one another not as competitors (which is common within a typically individualistic educational system) but as collaborators.

Respect: Group members communicate their opinions in a way that respects others, focusing on "What can we learn?" rather than "Who is to blame?" See constructive feedback in the process section for more details.

As an instructor, you can use several strategies to encourage students to develop a healthy climate within their small groups:

Assign students into diverse groups so that they encounter others with different backgrounds and interests.

Design activities that break the ice, promote awareness of differences within the group, encourage reflection on the stresses of working within a group, and point out the demands of working in a group.

Have students participate in trust challenges. For example, try the trust-fall, in which individual group members fall backward off a table and are caught by their fellow group members. Or blindfold individual students, and have their group members guide them orally through an obstacle course.

Encourage students to participate willingly and ask questions of others. To encourage listening skills and ensure that everyone in the group speaks, try the "circle of voices" exercise. See Centre for Teaching Excellence (CTE) teaching tip "Group Work in the Classroom: Types of Small Groups".

After students have worked in their groups for a couple of weeks, have them fill in a "Are we a team?" checklist individually, then discuss their answers within their group. Have them repeat this exercise when they have completed their task. See appendix B for an example of this checklist.

Skills for an effective group process

Besides knowing how to develop a healthy group climate, students also need to know how to function so that they are productive and accomplish their tasks effectively. An effective process will emerge as students exhibit these skills:

Individual responsibility and accountability: All group members agree on what needs to be done and by whom. Each student then determines what he or she needs to do and takes responsibility to complete the task(s). They can be held accountable for their tasks, and they hold others accountable for theirs.

Constructive Feedback: Group members are able to give and receive feedback about group ideas. Giving constructive feedback requires focusing on ideas and behaviours, instead of individuals, being as positive as possible, and offering suggestions for improvement. Receiving feedback requires listening well, asking for clarification if the comment is unclear, and being open to change and other ideas.

Problem solving: Group members help the group to develop and use strategies central to their group goals. As such, they can facilitate group decision making and deal productively with conflict. In extreme cases, they know when to approach the professor for additional advice and help.

Management and organization: Group members know how to plan and manage a task, how to manage their time, and how to run a meeting. For example, they ensure that meeting goals are set, that an agenda is created and followed, and that everyone has an opportunity to participate. They stay focused on the task and help others to do so too.

Knowledge of roles: Group members know which roles can be filled within a group (e.g., facilitator, idea-generator, summarizer, evaluator, mediator, encourager, recorder) and are aware of which role(s) they and others are best suited for. They are also willing to rotate roles to maximize their own and others' group learning experience.

As an instructor, use some of these strategies to encourage students to develop an effective process within their small groups:

Design the group task so that the students must work together. Group members will be more motivated and committed to working together if they are given a group mark; if you choose to evaluate in this way, be sure to make your expectations extremely clear. See the CTE teaching tip sheet "Methods for Assessing Group Work" for additional ideas.

Once students are in groups, have them develop, as one of their early assignments, a group contract in which they articulate ground rules and group goals. See the teaching tip "Making Group Contracts" for details. Be sure that groups discuss how they will respond to various scenarios such as absentee or late group members and those who do not complete their assigned tasks.

Distribute a list of decision-making methods and strategies for conflict resolution. The CTE teaching tip sheet "Group Decision Making" is a good place to start. Have each group articulate, based on this list, a set of strategies for decision making and conflict resolution; this list should become part of the group contract. You may also want to offer yourself as an impartial arbitrator in emergency situations, but encourage students to work out problems among themselves.

Provide students with guidelines for running a meeting, such as setting and following an agenda, specifying time limits, and monitoring progress on the agenda. Consult the CTE teaching tip sheet "Meeting Strategies to Help Prepare Students for Group Work" for additional suggestions.

Teach students effective methods for giving and receiving feedback. For sample methods, see the teaching tip "Receiving and Giving Effective Feedback". Create an assignment that involves them giving feedback to group members, and make it part of their final grade.

To help students recognize and make the most of their own and one another's preferred roles, outline with them a list of team roles (see the teaching tip "Group Roles" for one such list), have them determine which role(s) suits them best, and give them time to discuss within their groups how their particular role(s) will complement those of other group members. Requiring them to rotate their roles helps them to expand their skills set.

Appendix A: encouraging self-awareness and reflection in group work

One of the most important things you can do as an instructor is to have students reflect regularly on their group experiences. Their self-reflection will reinforce and further develop critical teamwork skills. Based on your objectives for the group project, create a set of prompts using the questions below. Have students then use these prompts to journal about their reactions to group climate and process. The journals encourage self-reflection and can help students see teamwork issues in new ways and create ideas for resolution. They can also provide a good basis from which students can choose comments to share with their group members in debriefing sessions. If students submit their journals periodically throughout the semester, give them feedback orally or in writing, and to the extent appropriate, discuss in class any trends that you have identified through observation or in the journals (e.g., reassure groups that many are facing similar challenges). Also, requiring all students to submit a final reflective report after the group project can help them to see the value of the teamwork expertise they have developed through practice.

Climate

Process

What are your group's ground rules and goals? What changes to these rules and goals might improve the functioning of your group?

How is everyone encouraged to stay accountable to the tasks they have been assigned?

To what extent do you and others follow the feedback methods laid out in class? How could you and your group members improve the way you give and receive feedback?

To what extent does your group reflect on how well its goals are being achieved? How would more (or less) discussion about goals help or hinder your group's functioning?

How are decisions made in your group? Who is involved and in which ways? What has been effective about the processes you have used? How could your decision-making processes be improved?

What happens if a group member is unhappy or uncomfortable with a decision made by the group?

What conflicts have arisen within your group? How (if at all) have the conflicts been resolved? What role do you play in resolving these conflicts? What could you (or others) do to improve your group's ability to deal productively with conflict?

How do your meetings typically proceed? What do you accomplish and in how much time? What is effective about your group functioning during meetings? What changes would improve your meetings?

Who has emerged as the leader in your group? Which other roles do you see team members playing? Which role(s) do you play? Which role do you prefer and why?

Appendix B: "Are We a Team?" checklist (Levin & Kent, 2001)

Check off the statements that accurately represent your group. Be prepared to discuss your choices afterwards with your group. Also consider ways to improve your group's functioning, especially as it relates to the statements you did not check off.

We all show equal commitment to our objective.

We all take part in deciding how work should be allocated.

We are committed to helping each other learn.

We acknowledge good contributions from team members.

We handle disagreements and conflicts constructively within the team.

We are able to give constructive criticism to one another and to accept it ourselves.

We all turn up to meetings and stay to the end.

We are good at making sure that everyone knows what's going on.

When one of us is under pressure, others offer to help him or her.

We trust each other.

We remain united even when we disagree.

We support each other to outsiders.

We feel comfortable and relaxed with one another.

Resources and References

Bosworth, K. (1994). Developing Collaborative Skills in College Students. New Directions for Teaching and Learning,
59. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. pp. 25-31.

Breslow, L. (1998). Teaching Teamwork Skills, Part 2. Teach Talk, X, 5.

Hills, H. (2001). Team-Based Learning. Burlington, VT: Gower.

Levin, P. (2002). Teamwork tutoring: Helping students working on group projects to develop teamwork skills.

Levin, P., and Kent, I. (2001). Draft manual on teamwork tutoring: 28 questions and answers for academics on teamwork in universities.

Reynolds, M. (1994). Groupwork in Education and Training. London: Kogan Page.

Silberman, M. (1996). Active Learning: 101 Strategies to Teach Any Subject. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

More Resources

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Teamwork Skills: Being an Effective Group Member | Centre for Teaching Excellence

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Audio version of "Teamwork skills: Being an effective group member" tip sheet (MP3) For small groups to function effectively in a course context, students must attend to both the climate within their group and the process by which they accomplish their tasks. Critical to a healthy climate and an effective process are strong communication skills.

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Mention group work and you're confronted with pointed questions and criticisms. The big problems, according to our audience: One or two students do all the work; it can be hard on introverts; and grading the group isn't fair to the individuals.

But the research suggests that a certain amount of group work is beneficial.

"The most effective creative process alternates between time in groups, collaboration, interaction, and conversation... [and] times of solitude, where something different happens cognitively in your brain," says Dr. Keith Sawyer, a researcher on creativity and collaboration, and author of Group Genius: The Creative Power of Collaboration.

So we looked through our archives and reached out to educators on Facebook to find out what solutions they've come up with for these common problems.

Making Sure Everyone Participates

"How many times have we put students in groups only to watch them interact with their laptops instead of each other? Or complain about a lazy teammate?" asks Mary Burns, a former French, Latin, and English middle and high school teacher who now offers professional development in technology integration.

Unequal participation is perhaps the most common complaint about group work. Still, a review of Edutopia's archives-and the tens of thousands of insights we receive in comments and reactions to our articles-revealed a handful of practices that educators use to promote equal participation. These involve setting out clear expectations for group work, increasing accountability among participants, and nurturing a productive group work dynamic.

Norms: At Aptos Middle School in San Francisco, the first step for group work is establishing group norms. Taji Allen-Sanchez, a sixth- and seventh-grade science teacher, lists expectations on the whiteboard, such as "everyone contributes" and "help others do things for themselves."

For ambitious projects, Mikel Grady Jones, a high school math teacher in Houston, takes it a step further, asking her students to sign a group contract in which they agree on how they'll divide the tasks and on expectations like "we all promise to do our work on time." Heather Wolpert-Gawron, an English middle school teacher in Los Angeles, suggests creating a classroom contract with your students at the start of the year, so that agreed-upon norms can be referenced each time a new group activity begins.

Group size: It's a simple fix, but the size of the groups can help establish the right dynamics. Generally, smaller groups are better because students can't get away with hiding while the work is completed by others.

"When there is less room to hide, nonparticipation is more difficult," says Burns. She recommends groups of four to five students, while Brande Tucker Arthur, a 10th-grade biology teacher in Lynchburg, Virginia, recommends even smaller groups of two or three students.

Meaningful roles: Roles can play an important part in keeping students accountable, but not all roles are helpful. A role like materials manager, for example, won't actively engage a student in contributing to a group problem; the roles must be both meaningful and interdependent.

At University Park Campus School, a grade 7-12 school in Worcester, Massachusetts, students take on highly interdependent roles like summarizer, questioner, and clarifier. In an ongoing project, the questioner asks probing questions about the problem and suggests a few ideas on how to solve it, while the clarifier attempts to clear up any confusion, restates the problem, and selects a possible strategy the group will use as they move forward.
Courtesy of University Park Campus School
At Design 39, a K-8 school in San Diego, groups and roles are assigned randomly using Random Team Generator, but ClassDojo, Team Shake, and drawing students' names from a container can also do the trick. In a practice called vertical learning, Design 39 students conduct group work publicly, writing out their thought processes on whiteboards to facilitate group feedback. The combination of randomizing teams and public sharing exposes students to a range of problem-solving approaches, gets them more comfortable with making mistakes, promotes teamwork, and allows kids to utilize different skill sets during each project.

Rich tasks: Making sure that a project is challenging and compelling is critical. A rich task is a problem that has multiple pathways to the solution and that one person would have difficulty solving on their own.

In an eighth-grade math class at Design 39, one recent rich task explored the concept of how monetary investments grow: Groups were tasked with solving exponential growth problems using simple and compound interest rates.

Rich tasks are not just for math class. When Dan St. Louis, the principal of University Park, was a teacher, he asked his English students to come up with a group definition of the word Orwellian. They did this through the jigsaw method, a type of grouping strategy that John Hattie's study Visible Learning ranked as highly effective.

"Five groups of five students might each read a different news article about the modern world," says St. Louis. "Then each student would join a new group of five where they need to explain their previous group's article to each other and make connections to each. Using these connections, the group must then construct a definition of the word Orwellian." For another example of the jigsaw approach, see this video from Cult of Pedagogy.

Supporting Introverts

Teachers worry about the impact of group work on introverts. Some of our educators suggest that giving introverts choice in who they're grouped with can help them feel more comfortable.

"Even the quietest students are usually comfortable and confident when they are with peers with whom they connect," says Shelly Kunkle, a veteran teacher at Wasawee Middle School in North Webster, Indiana. Wolpert-Gawron asks her students to list four peers they want to work with and then makes sure to pair them with one from their list.

Having defined roles within groups-like clarifier or questioner-also provides structure for students who may be less comfortable within complex social dynamics, and ensures that introverts don't get overshadowed by their more extroverted peers.

Finally, be mindful that introverted students often simply need time to recharge. "Many introverts do not mind and even enjoy interacting in groups as long as they get some quiet time and solitude to recharge. It's not about being shy or feeling unsafe in a large group," says Barb Larochelle, a recently retired high school English teacher in Edmonton, Alberta, who taught for 29 years.

"I planned classes with some time to work quietly alone, some time to interact in smaller groups or as a whole class, and some time to get up and move around a little. A whole class of any one of those is going to be hard on one group, but a balance works well."

Assessing Group Work

Grading group work is problematic. Often, you don't have a clear understanding of what each student knows, and a single student's lack of effort can torpedo the group grade. To some degree, strategies that assign meaningful roles or that require public presentations from groups provide a window in to each student's knowledge and contributions.

But not all classwork needs to be graded. Suzanna Kruger, a high school science teacher in Seaside, Oregon, doesn't grade group work-there are plenty of individual assignments that receive grades, and plenty of other opportunities for formative assessment.

John McCarthy, a former high school English and social studies teacher and current education consultant and adjunct professor at Madonna University for the graduate department for education, suggests using group presentations or group products as a non-graded review for a test. But if you want to grade group work, he recommends making all academic assessments within group work individual assessments. For example, instead of grading a group presentation, McCarthy grades each student on an essay, which the students then use to create their group presentation.

Laura Moffit, a fifth-grade teacher in Wilmington, North Carolina, uses self and peer evaluations to shed light on how each student is contributing to group work-starting with a lesson on how to do an objective evaluation. "Just have students circle :), :|, or :( on three to five statements about each partner, anonymously," Moffit commented on Facebook. "Then give the evaluations back to each group member. Finding out what people really think of your performance is a wake-up call."

And Ted Malefyt, a middle school science teacher in Hamilton, Michigan, carries a clipboard with the class list formatted in a spreadsheet and walks around checking in on students while they do group work.

"Using this spreadsheet, you have your own record of which student is meeting your expectations and who needs extra help," explains Malefyt. "As formative assessment takes place, quickly document with simple checkmarks."

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Educators weigh in on solutions to the common pitfalls of group work.

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An Effective Strategy for Successful Group Work

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An Effective Strategy for Successful Group Work

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Articulating what good teamwork looks like takes planning, reflection, and respect for student choice.

Sjoerd van Leeuwen / The iSpot

One of my all-time favorite reflective protocols is the Start-Stop-Continue exercise. It encourages learners to consider the impact of whatever is being learned by asking them about its perceived impact. A teacher or facilitator completes a lesson or an instruction sequence and then pauses, asking their audience to consider what they're going to start doing, stop doing, or continue doing based on a learning experience.

One example of how this structure was impactful for my growth occurred after I participated in a series of professional learning communities (PLCs) focused on collaborative learning. I was teaching middle school, and while collaborative learning can and should be done at any grade level, it's especially important in middle school, because tween learners need support as they encounter more complex emotions and social situations for the first time.

Based on what I learned from the PLC and the impact those strategies had in my classroom, I committed to start, stop, and continue certain things in regard to collaboration, each of which had profound impacts on how I viewed work time within a project-based learning (PBL) context.

START: Differentiate between group work and team work

Calling project work time "group work" is a bit of a misnomer. I once heard a colleague of mine, who also happened to be an experienced little league coach, explain the importance of this distinction in a very clever way: "There is a reason why we call them baseball teams rather than baseball groups." His point was that groups are not invested in the long-term success of their partners, while teammates recognize that individual efforts contribute to the success of all and are therefore more invested.

1. It provides students access to different perspectives and solutions that may exist outside their project team.

2. It allows teachers to leverage protocols that might call for pairs, trios, or larger groupings than the project teams may provide.

3. It gives students a break from the people they're collaborating with the most. This is sometimes critical to the continued harmony in a classroom, especially at the middle school level where relationships and hormones seem to change with the tides.

The reason this differentiation is key is that it reminds teachers to provide temporary grouping structures throughout the course of an assigned project that are different from the team that is producing the final product. There are many benefits to this, but here are three that I've observed:

STOP: Assuming That collaboration is built by experience alone

Having students work in groups is not the same as teaching them to collaborate. It's akin to teaching someone to swim by throwing them in a lake and shouting at them from a distance until they figure it out; it's skill development born out of desperation, and there are definitely less stressful ways to learn.

I believe that providing specific, teacher-facilitated opportunities to discreetly develop collaboration skills should be a part of any project where teamwork is required, especially early on. You want students to have a chance to follow Tuckman's stages of group development before grades add extra stress to the experience. Provide them time for storming and norming before deadlines, and you'll be setting them up for a better chance at success.

This can be done with short group challenges accompanied by a quality assessment tool, such as a rubric that clearly articulates what good teamwork looks like. Books like the summer camp classic Silver Bullets or the evidence-based rubrics on the PBLWorks website are resources worth checking out. Building your students' collaboration muscles takes planning, but it doesn't need to add full days to your PBL projects. Look for places to include 15-to-20-minute experiences at the beginning of your day for greatest impact.

CONTINUE: Include student voice in groupings

Whether or not to allow your students to pick their own groups for collaborative learning is a common question. While student choice can promote positive class culture and engagement, students don't always make grouping decisions based on who will be their most effective learning partner. Despite this, I did and still do advocate for occasionally allowing students to have some say in their groups, but this doesn't mean completely unstructured, or on scaffolded control.

Group and team formation should be a shared endeavor. Sometimes you're the one who makes the decision, and sometimes you allow a degree of student choice-but most often in a shared process.

An example of this would be allowing students their choice of roles, then a teacher uses that choice to form groups based on those roles. Another example might be allowing them to submit the name of a partner whom they want to work with and then forming the final group by putting two pairs together. They might also choose the type of final product they would like to create and then form groups based on that choice.

These choices I made about what to start-stop-continue doing in regard to group and team work became much more than just kids working in groups, but an opportunity to increase a key college- and career-readiness skill that would benefit them for the rest of their lives.

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An Effective Strategy for Successful Group Work

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Effective group work strategies can improve learning experiences when teachers balance their guidance with student choice.

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Tips for Designing and Facilitating Online Team Projects

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Tips for Designing and Facilitating Online Team Projects

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Teamwork and collaboration are active learning strategies in which students work and learn together in small groups to accomplish shared goals. Effective teamwork and collaboration are considered important to the students' learning process. Working in teams assists students in developing their problem solving, communication, and critical thinking skills, and allows them the opportunity to work with and learn from their peers. However, the online environment presents unique challenges for many online instructors who use teamwork. The resources below offer information for faculty about getting started with instructional groups, designing group assignments, and using groups successfully.

How to Design Team Projects

Different Types of Teamwork

Team projects could be used to build a learning community. You can use group discussions, group presentations, and group sharing activities in your course. When you design the team projects, think about the following components: 1) the team projects should be aligned with the learning objectives. The topics you provide to your students should be interrelated to the learning objectives. 2) The team project is complex and beyond the individual work, so students can divide the task to each member. 3) It is important to provide clear expectations for the team projects. 4) It is recommended to design authentic team projects that provide the real-world scenarios to engage students to apply what they have learned into the assignments.

In the online environment, you could put students in the zoom breakout rooms to ask them to work on a collaborative project. In the hybrid course, you can change this into an asynchronous online group discussion. Some ideas for the team projects could be:

Role playing

Projects

Group Presentations

You may incorporate external tools such as Google Docs, Padlet, and more to encourage active participation in your courses.

Team Size Recommendations

Based on Bean (1996), three to five students as a team seems to work effectively in an online environment. Small group size makes students easier to collaborate and facilitate. It also can maximize the involvement of the projects.

Timing of Project Submission Process

Start the team project at a manageable level. For the complicated team project, it is recommended to organize the projects into several stages. Identify the milestone deadlines and provide students with the feedback to make sure they are on the right track. For example, for a team research presentation, you may consider making the project as four stages: 1) the team introduction, 2) proposal for the team research project, 3) final team research project and 4) the team presentation.

Strategies for Effective Teamwork and Collaboration

Set guidelines or norms for student-student interactions and student-instructor interactions during teamwork.

Facilitate communication with team members. At the beginning of the semester, ask team members to exchange contact information and preferred ways to communicate. Providing them with resources or reviewing communication skills may also be helpful.

Help students assign team roles. Students can be assigned to specific roles by instructors or be allowed to choose by themselves. Either way, students should be clear about their roles within the teams.

Monitor group progress through observation, check-ins, and suggest resources that can be useful to groups. View this checklist for managing and supporting groups to help you manage and support student groups.

Require periodic progress reports. To monitor how effectively team members are working together on a project, ask students to submit a progress report periodically. The report may include the time log or contributions of each member.

Provide students with the necessary resources to succeed.

Facilitating Online Group Presentations

Now that students have done the work, how should they present their learning? In an online learning modality, group presentations can be tricky. Ultimately, there are two options for facilitating online group presentations: a synchronous presentation, or an asynchronous presentation.

Synchronous Presentations

Groups present live via Zoom to the rest of the class

Create a presentation schedule ahead of class time so groups know when they will be presenting.

Asynchronous Presentations
Groups pre-record their presentation and share it with the class. Peers can watch other group's presentations and leave feedback.

View asynchronous group presentation recording instructions using Zoom or Voicethread

Share recording links in a Canvas discussion thread, on a Padlet, or within a Voicethread to encourage peer critiques

Evaluating Online Teamwork

Teamwork and collaboration involve students working together one-on-one or in small groups. When evaluating teamwork, there are two things to evaluate: the final product of the teamwork and student participation. Typically, an instructor will assess teamwork based on the final project instead of evaluating contributions from each student. However, students in the online environment frequently express concern that not all members contribute equally when working in groups.

Therefore, developing a transparent assessment process that evaluates both individual and team-based learning can encourage student collaboration. Some of the strategies to effectively assess teamwork involve using student self-evaluation and peer evaluation. Using the combination of individual assessment and team project assessment can provide the instructor with valuable information on how teams function and how to provide feedback and grading.

Here are some strategies to effectively assess online teamwork:

Assessing the Final Product: When assessing the final product, it's important to take into account the final product and the individual contributions of the team members. In this instance, it's helpful to evaluate the process by having students document and submit tasks and timelines throughout their time working together. Additionally, utilizing rubrics to evaluate teamwork (sample rubric for statistics project) helps make the grading process more transparent.

Assessing Student Participation: To assess student participation effectively, it's important to include opportunities for self and peer evaluation. To engage students in self-evaluation, it's advised to provide prompts to help students analyze their experience (prompt example 1) (prompt example 2). When asking students to evaluate their peers, typically a form response or other ranking worksheet (worksheet example 1) (worksheet example 2) (worksheet example 3) is helpful.

Tools to Support Teamwork

Google Drive

Google Drive is a helpful resource to collaborate with group members on documents and presentations. When using Google Drive, creating a shared folder is the best way to coordinate with team members and work together on resources for a project. You can learn more about using Google Drive by viewing the ITDS Google Drive Training, taking a look at the ITDS Google resource page, or visiting our Collaborations page in our Canvas Faculty Orientation.

Canvas Groups

Groups in Canvas are a subset of a course with a course-like environment. Groups include their own discussion space, calendar, and collaborative tools; it's a fantastic space for teams in a course to work together. Groups come with some advantages for an instructor as well. For example, creating a group discussion assignment will create an identical discussion topic for each group and allow students to converse more intimately with each other. Additionally, creating a group assignment will allow instructors to quickly score all members of a group at the same time. Learn more about Canvas Groups by visiting the Canvas Faculty Orientation Groups page.

Collaborative Tools

There are many tools students can use to enhance collaboration and teamwork across learning modalities.

In the brainstorming and planning stage of teamwork, students can utilize mind mapping as a strategy to organize their thoughts and resources. There are multiple available free online mind mapping tools for students to use, or if teaching F2F, students can create a physical mind map on paper.

Padlet can be used as a space for teams to share resources and leave feedback for one another. Students have the ability to embed various types of media and link out to files as necessary. Alternatively, it can also be used as a space for teams to share their final products with one another and elicit feedback and comments.

When students are ready to present their findings, they can utilize Voicethread to create an asynchronous presentation. Team members can upload their presentation materials, and then add voice or video commentary for each "slide" of their presentation. Voicethread can also be used as a virtual gallery of final project submissions and students can view and give feedback to peers' work.

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Teamwork and collaboration are active learning strategies in which students work and learn together in small groups to accomplish shared goals. Effective teamwork and collaboration are considered important to the students' learning process. Working in teams assists students in developing their problem solving, communication, and critical thinking skills, and allows them the opportunity to work [...]