Teamwork Toolkit

Teams

At university, students need to have opportunities to work in teams that are:

• diverse in their composition;
• accepting of different points of view, skills and experience;
• focused on a common task, product or learning outcome;
• flexible, allowing individual members to take on different roles; and
• competitive, while still being collaborative and supportive.

Tasks

Team tasks must be carefully designed so that they:

• allow for creative problem solving;
• provide opportunities for input from every member of the team;
• have a clearly defined focus on either the end product or the team process itself, or a balanced mix of the two; and
• can be assessed on the basis of individual and team performance.

Ground rules

Team members need to accept certain groundrules:

• all ideas are valued equally, and evaluated critically;
• everyone needs to pull their weight, meet deadlines, and contribute equally;
• meetings need to be run formally and regularly;
• actions need to be followed through;
• reporting needs to be accurate and comprehensive;
• problems with under-performing team members need to be discussed openly and resolved quickly; and
• peer assessment (if there is any) should be given fairly.

Assessment

When designing a teamwork task or project, consider whether:

• it should be assessed at all;
• it will achieve the learning objectives for the course;
• you will assess individual performance and learning outcomes, overall group performance and learning outcomes, or a balanced mix of the two;
• you will negotiate assessment criteria with the students; and
• you will ask students to self-assess their performance in a reflective journal or log.