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…

Maybe you heard the line "managing programmers is like herding cats", and if you consider there is some truth behind this, then you should, perhaps, think how it is to teach people to perform this job. As we know from the research literature, there is no such thing as a consensus about the most suitable teaching method of a software…

Team-based learning (TBL) is a form of small-group learning that assumes stable teams promote accountability. Teamwork promotes communication among members; application exercises promote active learning. Students must prepare for each class; failure to do so harms their team's performance. Therefore, TBL promotes accountability. As part of the…

We have studied the types of student teams that are most effective for collaborative learning in a large freshman university physics course. We compared teams in which the students were all of roughly equal ability to teams with a mix of student abilities, we compared teams with three members to teams with four members, and we examined teams with…

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…

This paper details our collaborative work on the Improving Learning Outcomes in Primary Schools (ILOPS) project in Burundi, Malawi, Uganda and Senegal. ILOPS set out to establish an innovative template for multi-stakeholder, multinational participatory evaluation (PE) and examine the fundamental roles, relationships and evidence that underpin the…

We report a within-teams experiment testing the effects of fit between team structure and regulatory task demands on task performance and satisfaction through average team member positive affect and helping behaviors. We used a completely crossed repeated-observations design in which 21 teams enacted 2 tasks with different regulatory focus…

This research study examined student perceptions of group experiences in the classroom. The author used cooperative learning and team-based learning to focus on three characteristics that are critical for the success of groups: structure of activities, relationships of group members, and accountability of group members. Results indicated that…

It appears that the use of group activities is continuing to gain momentum in both mainstream education (Gillies, 2007) and L2 education (Jacobs & Goh, 2007), based on support from theory, research and people's own experiences with groups as teachers and students. However, the use of group activities brings with it a host of questions that…

The objective of the exercise described here is to teach students about group formation using group concepts and theory. It also provides a unique way to form work groups for class projects. Students will become more aware of the reasons people join groups, the benefits groups provide for them, and an understanding of how groups are formed. The…

This article proposes a pedagogical framework to help students analyze their group and team interactions. Intersecting five fundamental group attributes (group size, group goal, group member interdependence, group structure, and group identity) with three overarching group processes (leadership, decision making, and conflict management) creates an…

This article discusses the use of teaching teams to encourage active learning in a business communication class. The author offers examples of short activities that can be used to help create an active learning environment. Some of these favorite activities include homework reviews, the value line, 3-2-1 processor, and muddiest point. In each of…

In today's business world, the ability to work efficiently and effectively with others in a group is a mandatory skill. Many employers rank "ability to work with a group" as one of the most important attributes for business school graduates to possess. Therefore, it is important for instructors to understand the factors that influence group…

Although some evidence suggests that providing treatment via service coordination teams is related to improved outcomes among youth in a system of care, the aspects of team structure that contribute to treatment effectiveness are not well understood. This study draws on team membership and attendance data to identify and describe the structure of…

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…