Questrom Team Learning

Faculty Resources
Teamwork & Collaborative Learning

Using Teams in Your Course

The decision to use teams in any course is an important pedagogical decision. Team learning has been well established by researchers as an effective way to improve both learning and student motivation within a course. That said, when using teams as a significant component of a course, it is critical that faculty understand how to set student teams up for success. Below are some important ideas for you to consider as you design teamwork and collaboration into your course.

Why Teams Framework for Teams What to consider

Why Use Teams?

The use of teams enables faculty to teach and assign more complex tasks, projects, and assignments that can deepen student learning. The benefits to students include higher grades, deeper comprehension of material, better interpersonal and teaming skills, and better preparation for the professional world.

  • Greater learning
  • Increased engagement
  • Professional skill development
  • Leadership practice
  • Takes time and effort to excel
  • Requires a focus on process
  • Generates more conflicts than individual work

Framework for Successful Teams

3 Dimensions of Team Effectiveness: Project, Process, and People. All three are indispensable to a successful team.

Teamwork requires that students work interdependently to accomplish their goals. Successful teams not only deliver a top-quality project or product, they also build and maintain a strong, supportive, and equitable team process that guides how the work is done and ensures that all team members (people) are engaged and supported.

  • Project

    Successful teams work diligently to produce high-quality project deliverables, consistently and on-time.

  • Process

    Successful teams plan and attend to the process of how the team does its work. Establishing ethical, equitable, and supportive processes enables teams to achieve and maintain high performance.

  • People

    By aligning individual goals with the team’s goals and establishing important team roles for each member, teams support the learning, growth and development of all members.

What to Consider When Using Teams

Once you have decided to use teams in your course, you need to think about how you will create the teams, what team assignments you will require, the role you will play in guiding teams, and finally how you will assess and grade performance.

Click the box below for specific information, suggestions, and tools to get started using teams in your courses.

Information and Tools