Team projects - always or sometimes?

Do you really need a team-based project in your course? Need, of course, being the operative word here. A common complaint of our students is the difficulty in scheduling team meetings – resulting many times in premature division of project work and substandard stitching together of the assignment often moments before the deadline. On the surface, it is easy to dismiss the complaint about problematic schedules and suggest that students simply find a way to make it work. That used to be my first response. I’ve taken more time though to consider our students and how their academic world differs from my memory. Now, I ask this fundamental question before designing my syllabus: Is the team project in place for pedagogical or grading reasons?

New faculty often comment on how busy our undergraduates seem to be, particularly in comparison to how some of us experienced college. To take 4 to 5 courses, live in a dorm, and work part-time or not at all while in school affords a flexibility to meet class members to work on projects, exchange ideas, and then divide up the work as needed. I don’t recall more than one or two courses per semester as an undergraduate where we had group projects. While Suffolk’s many advisory boards and recruiters tell us there is an increased need for team skills, it seems that there is a tipping point for doing our students a disservice by burdening them with coordinating schedules for multiple teams each with multiple members every semester – and hoping that they commute to class on time, work to pay for classes, do their other assignments, attend Career Services’ workshops, participate in clubs, get involved in campus events, and more.

In some classes it makes a great deal of sense to include a team project or presentation – some material is so complex or requires multiple viewpoints that students do better and learn more from their interactions. Other assignments don’t necessitate collective thinking, experiences, views, or resources, but are simply divided by the students into “equal parts” and then pieced together by one member before submitting to the professor. In the worst cases, these final products are not viewed by or reviewed by the group. Some students are so driven by the need for an A grade that they dominate the group process and product, and refuse to delegate or include others. A good grade reinforces this behavior in the future, but fails to teach them effective delegation, motivation, or team management skills. Students who wavered between slacking and participation are then pushed to the former (without much resistance). In the end, the learning experience for many is limited to a narrow slice of the project’s goals.

What can you do? First, question your own motivation for building a team project into the course. Simply putting students in a team doesn’t necessary build skills, enlighten them on effective team behaviors, or lead to a better product. I’ve dropped team projects from some of my courses, instead using individual assignments. While this entailed more grading for me, it was the right choice for those courses to ensure student learning was maximized as the teams didn’t add much at all. In another course, I retained the group project, but designed it to require meaningful interaction among students and outputs that required stronger collaboration. This always includes a peer evaluation of contribution that is available on BlackBoard prior to the start of the project. Being clear up front and talking about the expected team behaviors helped students understand why they were to be evaluated on these points (ranging from slacking to dominating).

The bottom line on teams in class comes down to student learning – what will they gain by working in a team that goes beyond an individual assignment?