Group projects enable students to build valuable critical thinking and communication skills that are increasingly required for success in the agricultural industry. Group projects provide well-documented benefits; however, associated challenges lead to student and instructor reluctance to engage in group work in the college classroom.…

In a small-group communication course, students participate in a semester-long project to observe an organization while applying many group communication principles, including conflict resolution, group dynamics, teambuilding, leadership, and diversity. In groups of five, the students select any organization, agency, or department on campus or in…

Team projects are a component of many business courses. The objective is to build team skills in addition to learning subject matter. However, instructors often pay less attention to team design and behavior and assume students already have or will learn team skills on their own. The authors examined the effect of providing structure to team work…

To prepare graduates for today's work environment, they must be immersed in positive (and perhaps negative) small group experiences in their courses, which will in turn provide a basic understanding of how teams form and develop over time. In the fall of 2009, we started exploring how software development teams form and interact in a computer…

Group research projects frequently are used to teach undergraduate research methods. This study uses multivariate analyses to examine the characteristics of higher-achieving groups (those that earn higher grades on group research projects) and to estimate the effects of participating in higher-achieving groups on subsequent individual learning…

In business higher education, group project work plays an essential role. The purpose of the present study is to explore the relationship between the group heterogeneity of students' business project groups and their academic achievements at both group and individual levels. The sample consists of 536 freshmen from an International Business School…

As the use of project-based learning becomes more frequent in the K-12 science classroom, and in chemistry classrooms in particular, teachers have begun to identify practical questions about implementation that should be addressed empirically. One such question concerns whether there is an ideal group size that fosters individual student…

With the increasing prevalence of group work in marketing courses there is a need to consider the impact of students' social dynamics on both learning and satisfaction outcomes. This article explores one such dynamic at both intra- and intergroup levels. Using data generated from multiple sources, it was identified that students who are actively…

Senior design capstone projects frequently require team members to self-organize for a project and then execute the design/build portion with limited resources. This is challenging for inexperienced students who struggle with technical as well as program management and team building issues. This paper outlines a general framework that can be used…