December 31, 2025 • 47 mins
Teamwork skills are highly valued by employers but most faculty have not been trained to create effective team projects. In this episode, Tim Franz and Lauren Vicker join us to discuss a resource they developed to help faculty create more effective team assignments and projects.
Tim is a Professor in the Psychology Department at St. John Fisher University and Lauren is a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Media and Communication, also at St. John Fisher University. They are the authors of Making Team Projects Work: A College Instructor’s Guide to Successful Student Groupwork which has been recently released by Routledge.
A transcript of this episode and show notes may be found at http://teaforteaching.com.
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(00:00):
Teamwork skills are highly valued byemployers but most faculty have not been
trained to create effective team projects.
In this episode, we discuss a resourcefaculty can use to create more
effective team assignments and projects.
(00:21):
Thanks for joining us for Tea forTeaching, an informal discussion
of innovative and effectivepractices in teaching and learning.
This podcast series is hostedby John Kane, an economist...
...and Rebecca Mushtare,a graphic designer...
...and features guests doing importantresearch and advocacy work to make
higher education more inclusiveand supportive of all learners.
(00:52):
Our guests today are TimFranz and Lauren Vicker.
Tim is a Professor in the PsychologyDepartment at St. John Fisher University
and Lauren is a Professor Emeritus in theDepartment of Media and Communication,
also at St. John Fisher University.
They are the authors of MakingTeam Projects Work: A College
Instructor’s Guide to SuccessfulStudent Groupwork which has been
(01:13):
recently released by Routledge.
Welcome back, Tim and Lauren.
Thanks for having us.
Really appreciate being here.
Yeah, it's great to be back.
Lauren, are you drinking tea?
I am drinking tea.
I am drinking my favoritemorning brew, which is Typhoo.
Their tagline is great British tea since1903, so there's a big history there.
(01:38):
Nice.
And Tim?
Well, I am drinking the samething as last time you had me on.
And though Lauren is talking about morningtea, I have switched over to my decaf
green tea, which I drink in the afternoon.
And especially with how cold it is herein upstate New York, as you both know,
(01:58):
I'm using it to warm my hands too.
It's a good solution for that, for sure.]
And Rebecca?
I have a London Fog.
Is that another one you bought in London?
Yes.
I figured.
Although, coming soon,teas from Switzerland.
Ohh.
I finally unpacked them.
(02:20):
Well, I just have a Prince ofWales tea from my local Wegmans.
So we invited you here todayto discuss your most recent
book, Making Team Projects Work.
First, though, can you tell us a littlebit about your long-term collaboration?
So I was at St. John Fisher alreadyfor a couple of decades, when Tim
(02:41):
arrived, and the Department of Media andCommunication, we had a course in small
group communication, we called it, andthe Psychology Department had a course
called group dynamics, and some studentswere talking about, “Hey, they do a lot
of the same things over in Psych.” So Ilooked up Tim, and we started talking and
(03:03):
looking at the classes, and decided thatthere was enough overlap that we could
offer it, co-teaching it, so that it wouldbe cross listed between psychology and
communications, and the more we startedteaching and coming up with ideas, the
more we realized that there was a needout there to talk more about groups and
(03:24):
teams, especially in classroom settings.
So that kind of just started thewhole thing where we were working
together and just had a great time.
It was fun to bounce ideas off each otherfor every class, and we were always there
for all of the work with the students.
And that's been a long-termcollaboration, hasn't it?
(03:46):
Yes, we started workingtogether years ago.
I think, Lauren, the first time wetaught together was like 2004, 2003.
It was a long time ago, and weco-taught together for a long time
before we realized we have more tocontribute than just co-teaching.
And how did this newbook project come about?
Well, we had started off, as you bothknow, from last time, we started off with
(04:10):
two self-published books when we firststarted the project, which was born out
of us thinking about how what we haddone really applies to other people.
And then we did a quick survey of, Ithink we had about 300 faculty members
answer our survey, and realized that alot of people don't know how to run team
(04:30):
projects well, but to keep the booksinexpensive, we self published them on
Amazon, and then we learned that marketingis hard, very hard, and so we decided
to move the book over to a publisher.
And we got picked up.
We chose Rutledge Taylorand Francis publisher.
Both of us had past experience withthem with other books, and so it was a
(04:52):
real good synergy, and it’s been a greatworking relationship with them as well.
So we moved it over to a bookwith a publisher to help make
the marketing better, really.
Right, and the big difference too isthat we had a separate book for students,
and Routledge wanted us to combine them.
So in this new book, they areboth together, the faculty version
(05:16):
as well as the student handouts.
That's great.
As you alluded to earlier, oneof the NACE competencies is the
development of skills in teamwork.
But have many faculty received trainingin how to effectively assist students
in developing the skills necessary?
Well, we didn't ask that questionspecifically in the survey, but
(05:36):
we assume that not very manyhave received formal training.
For example, there are a lot of schools,especially graduate programs, in medical
education that uses team-based learning.
Which is a very structured way to useteams in the classroom, and people learn
how to set up teams there and how to dothe TBL process, but they don't get a
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lot of those group dynamic things thatwe like to talk about, like, what do
you do when the team is in conflict?
Or how do you have a team workmost effectively if you're teaching
an asynchronous online class?
Those sorts of thingsthat we realized are gaps.
But we also found that there are stillmany, many faculty who are just lecturing,
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and they tell us, “Well, that's theway I like to teach,” you know, that
old sage on the stage sort of thing.
And so, we feel that there's such aneed out there, and that's a lot of what
we're trying to do is get the word out.
Yeah, what we found in that survey is thatthere is a sizable, I'm not going to say
majority, but a sizable number of facultywho are actually resistant to doing group
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work or teamwork in the classroom becausethey say it's too hard and doesn't work.
But honestly, our interpretation isthat they're not doing it well enough
yet, that if they made some very slightchanges to what they do, they could
pretty easily improve their groupwork, their teamwork in their classes.
And as you said, the NACE survey andalso recent surveys by AAC&U, they
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also put teamwork as the number one ornumber two things that employers want.
So as faculty members, we think it'sreally important to help prepare our
students to be better team members, andso that's what we want out of this work.
So one of the reasons we tried tomake the book inexpensive was because
we wanted students and facultyto be able to use it very easily.
(07:32):
So who is the target audience?
Is it designed just for faculty, or isit for faculty and students as well?
Or are the handouts just a supplementfor faculty to use with students?
Well, the book is designed for collegeprofessors, and we want to point
out it's at every level, from, youknow, entering community college,
all the way through professional anddoctoral programs, anyone can use the
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information in the book, the studenthandouts, you wouldn't probably ask
the students to buy a copy of the book.
The student handouts are available for thefaculty to use to supplement what they're
doing, and we have those available.
We share those with people in a formatwhere they can make copies and that
sort of thing, if they want to do that.
(08:17):
But the target audience is, for the mostpart, college professors, although I
have to say we did a whole series aboutwhat works best in teams with young
professionals, former students of ourswho were working, and it was a great
series because they showed that theconcepts that we talk about, yeah, in
academia, but there are people who areworking professionally who need those
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tips as well, especially if they haven'thad any formal training in how to direct
a team or how to manage co workers.
There are a lot of assumptions, thatwe're maybe just born with the ability
to work in teams, or that you walkinto a classroom and have those skill
sets, and most of the time, peoplehave never been trained in any kind
of way about how to work in a group.
(09:01):
Exactly.
Throughout your book, you rely on asystems input-process-output model.
Can you provide our listenerswith an overview of this model?
So the input-process-output modelcomes from really engineering and
other types of areas like that, whereyou bring inputs in, you process the
data, you have outputs that come out.
(09:22):
And it was applied years agoby Steiner and many others in
the group dynamics literature.
So it's actually not a new model.
It's one that's in the small-groupcommunication and small-group decision
making, small-groups literature,and it says that there are things
that people bring, the inputs to agroup, and then there's the stuff
that happens in the group, and thenthere's what the group gets out of it.
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And so the inputs are things likethe contexts that people are embedded
in, the skills that the team membershave, or the task that they're working
on, which turns out to be reallyimportant, and the processes are what
happens when they're working together.
So this is the good and the bad.
It's the conflict thathappens, that people run into.
(10:07):
It's the decision making processes,but it's also where somebody says
something and somebody else has anotheridea, and you get some synergies.
So, it's all the things that happenwhen they're working together.
Now, in the outputs, as professors,what we're often concerned about
is the task-related outputs.
What can we give them a grade on?
What is the objective thing thatthey're working on, but there's also a
(10:31):
lot of social outputs that people get.
I mean, we're social animals by nature,and people get a lot of social outputs.
Get to know people.
In fact, I always like to say,at my nephew's wedding, my
nephew and his wife met at Keukacollege during a team project.
That was their initial meeting.
And I say, well, sometimes youmight even get married after your
(10:53):
team project and have two kids.
There are other things that people get.
That's the input-process-output model.
And in the book, we literally walk througheach part of the input, each part of the
process, each part of the output, so thatpeople can see where to improve their
teams, both faculty members and students.
(11:13):
And this was also the structure of the waythat we taught our group dynamics class.
So one thing we acknowledge is we hadthe luxury of teaching a whole class
in how to make teams work better.
And so a lot of times we know that facultyhave so much content to cover that they
can't do a whole week talking aboutleadership in teams, so that's one of the
(11:35):
things that we're trying to help them do.
But we taught this way, and I wasgoing through some old notes from
my PhD dissertation back at theUniversity of Pittsburgh, and I
actually found a model that lookedquite similar to the input-output model
based on small group communication.
So it's something that'sbeen with us for a long time.
(11:55):
We feel it gives people the idea ofhow to organize their thinking about
teams and how to make them work better.
Throughout the book, in each of yourchapters, you have a common structure.
Could you give our listeners an overviewof what that structure looks like?
I'll start this becauseI like to tell a story.
And speaking of stories… when we wrotethe self published version, we had
(12:19):
every story in every chapter begin withsomebody by the name of Fred and Lauren
and I, you'll see us laughing when we usethat word, that was not his real name.
But I mean, this is back in 2004, 2006when we first started working together,
we had that student who did, not allthe things, but caused struggles with
(12:43):
his team again and again and again.
So we love to use that Fred name, eventhough it's not in the new book, we've
switched the names around, because itreminds us that there are times where
you have those one or two studentswho cause their teams to struggle.
And so now the stories are really aconglomeration of multiple experiences,
(13:05):
not just from us, but from other facultymembers we've talked to, interviewed,
it comes from our discussions with them.
So each one starts with a story to tryto show people it's real, it's honest.
This is what, as a faculty member, even afaculty member who wrote the book and does
this, I had a Fred last semester, evenwith all the procedures, it still happens.
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And we've all had studentslike Fred at some point.
I bet you some of us havecolleagues named Fred.
That's certainly true.
So we start with a story, and thenwe have some reflection questions,
asking the reader to think about,has this ever happened to you?
What did you do?
What would you recommend if youknew someone in this situation?
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And then we go into the content forthat particular chapter and talk
about what things are most important,what some of the issues are, and then
how to resolve some of those issues.
And the second section of eachchapter is the student section.
And so this is basically just a pareddown version of the instructor section.
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It includes some content and theory andthat sort of thing, but it mostly includes
the activities for students to do.
So that's where we have handouts wherethe professor can make copies and put
students into teams and have them do that.
So that is the basic frameworkfor each of the chapters.
And starting with a narrative can bea really effective way of engaging
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people and making the issues memorable.
Can you talk a little bit aboutsome of the student activities that
you just mentioned that come inthe form of handouts and things?
So, in each chapter, we haveactivities that really are focused
on the content in that chapter.
Some of them requirethe students to reflect.
Some of them are specificactivities to help them develop.
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So, for instance, one that we love, andit's a great icebreaker, is the group
IQ test, and we use that right away,where they take an IQ test, really not
an IQ test, as you can imagine, butthey take a little, I think it's 13 item
quiz, individually, and then they takeit again as a group, and watch how much
differently they do in a group versuswhen they were doing it individually.
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And it helps them to see sometimes anindividual does better than the group,
sometimes the group does better than anyof the individuals, and what causes that?
It's a real good way to get peoplethinking about group work and teamwork.
But we also have exercises.
Again, in every chapter, there's exercisesthat help to hit that content home.
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For the faculty members, for example,we have an exercise about how to create
a team task, which is really something.
It's one of the inputs.
And any task we use as professorsreally needs to be focused on a
team and not an individual, andthere is a difference about that.
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In the leadership chapter, studentscan take leadership assessments and
see how they rate themselves, and thatway, that will foster a discussion in
the team about should we pick a leader,or should we have shared leadership,
and what are we going to do if we'vegot a conflict with the leader?
And so we try to make all of theactivities relevant to whatever is in
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the content of that particular chapter.
One of the things you talk aboutin the book is best practices
in terms of how to form teams.
What are some of yourrecommendations for that?
I know students generally prefer pickingtheir own teams, but you argue that
that's probably not a very good strategy.
Could you talk a little bit about that?
Never, never, never letthem pick their own teams.
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You just don't get the diversityof people, ideas, backgrounds,
experiences that you need to reallydo a great job on a team project.
You need lots of inputs into the team.
And when students pick their own teams,they pick their friends, they pick
people that they already know, thatthey have things in common with, and
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it really hinders their ability to doa good job, and it also can test the
bonds of friendship, because inevitably,they're going to be issues on the team.
And sometimes people think, Well,I'm friends with these people.
I can let this slide, or I canmiss this particular meeting,
because I know them really well,and they know I'll come through.
And so it's really important… the numberone thing is not to let students do
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that and tell them that at the outset.
At first they're disappointed,but then you explain the
importance of having to do it.
So we go on from there to talk aboutways that you can put the teams together.
Tim has a good one that Ithink he can explain about the
questionnaire that students use.
So a perfect example thissemester, my students, in my…
(17:58):
it's called workplace psychology.
In that class, they do a project, andat the beginning of the semester, I was
very clear that they're not going to picktheir own teams, just like Lauren said,
and I used a structured approach for that,which means I give them a questionnaire.
Now I use Qualtrics, an online survey, andI know what skills they need to succeed
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on this project, and so they have toanswer questions, self rating, better than
nothing, but they’re self rating theirideas about how they are with writing,
with analysis, with organization, withleadership, with working as a team member,
and I have more too, but I pick theskills that are necessary for success,
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and then I make sure that every team isbalanced so they have somebody who rated
on a five-point scale of four or five ineach area, so they can feel comfortable
knowing that their team does have theskills to succeed in this project.
And I will tell you, Lauren and I arereally passionate about this whole
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idea of don't let people pick theirown teams, find a better way to do it.
And the number one reason, otherthan all the theoretical reasons,
and what the research shows, and ifyou look in the team based learning
literature, they're very clear, andthey have the research to back this up.
But there’s a student I had, where I'lljust call her Jane, and Jane saw the world
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a little differently than most of theother students in the class, and I'm still
choked up about this because I was swayed.
This is 15 years ago, when I wasswayed to let them pick their
own team, and nobody picked Jane.
Now Jane was actually a straight Astudent and really thoughtful and
hard working, but Jane was quirky,and nobody picked Jane, and Jane was
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in tears at the end of the class.
And is really, is that thetype of situation we want
to set up in our classes.
Our classes should encouragethat knowledge diversity.
Bring people in.
That's the whole reason we use teams,is to have a lot of different voices
and opinions so that we can makemore informed and better decisions.
So let's utilize that.
(20:04):
And the main thing in terms ofthe students, is to make sure the
process is transparent, so theyunderstand how the teams were put
together, how they were formed.
I even had one of my public speakingclasses, I told them what the
parameters were (20:20):
you can't pick your own teams, and I let them suggest them.
And it turned out they had a great idea.
We made sure that people fromdifferent majors were in teams
together, and that people who haddifferent experiences in the field
of public speaking, how much they hadalready done coming into the class.
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And it turned out those were great teams.
So it's just making sure that the studentsunderstand that this is what's important.
And remember, when they get into theirprofessional settings, you don't have a
choice of who you're going to work with.
You're in a certain work group, or have acertain manager you report to, and that's
the group that you have to work with.
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You have to learn how to work with them.
So it's really goodtraining for the future.
And I forgot to close the loop aboutworkplace psychology, because they did
tell me in mid-November that they werereally bummed that they didn't get to
pick their own teams at the beginningof the semester, but they loved by
(21:21):
mid-November that we did it the way wedid, because they knew they could all
succeed on the project, and they actuallyadmitted that they met some new people.
So it worked out well, I don't know ifanybody's getting married like my nephew.
One of the things you advocate foris the formation of team charters.
Can you talk a little bitabout what a team charter is
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and what they should address?
So we let the students know that it'simportant that they set up some guidelines
at the beginning of the semester.
Occasionally, we've actually donethis with the class, where we've put
the students in teams and have themgenerate some norms that they think
should govern their discussions, andwe'll post that on the course management
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system, and then if something's goingwrong, we can always go back to it.
A team charter is a little moreformal, but when a team is working
on a big project, it's a good ideafor them to sit down and decide
how they're going to run things.
Are they going to, for example, setup a common meeting time, which we
(22:25):
really stress, that students lookat their schedules and figure out
all of their other responsibilities.
When can they meet everyweek outside of class?
They have to have a common meetingtime, and that's really important.
How are they going to handle conflict?
How are they going to make decisions?
Tim and I, this week we're doinga LinkedIn series on problem
solving and this week, we've beentalking about decision rules.
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Is it going to be majority rule?
Students like to do majority rule.
But then, if you're in a five-persongroup and you're in the two that don't
get your choice, how committed areyou going to feel to the decision?
So do you want to work with consensus?
Are you going to appoint one leaderor are you going to rotate leadership.
What are you going todo when you get stuck?
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Are you going to go to theprofessor first, or are you going
to try to work it out yourselves?
So all of those things, and in theteam charter, it's great if the
students actually write those thingsdown and have everyone in the team
sign off on it, because it givesthem something they can go back to
later on, when inevitably, they'vegot some issue they need to work out.
(23:30):
I actually did a presentation, Lauren ison the presentation, just about a year
and a half ago, at NITOP, the NationalInstitute for Teaching of Psychology,
about how to do those charters andone way I do them, and this is what I
talked about at NITOP, is working itaround our obligations to one another,
rather than our expectations of oneanother, it's what we owe one another.
(23:52):
And it puts a different spin on it, andallows people to see that, for their group
to succeed, they have to do something.
It's not what they get from others,but what they have to do and what they
owe, so and again, this is somethingthat I presented and Lauren wasn't
at the conference, but we're both onthe conference presentation for that.
One of the things you've alreadytalked about is having these team
charters as a way of reducing thelikelihood of problems and also perhaps
(24:15):
providing a simpler way of resolvingthem, since they had all agreed to it.
But are there other things thatinstructors can do to help resolve
issues of shirking by individualmembers, because that's one of the most
common problems we see with teamwork.
So I'm going to say two things, andI'm sure Lauren will have even more
than this, because we have so manyideas to help with this, that lack of
(24:37):
motivation, that free riding, socialloafing, that happens in so many teams.
So I'll just talk about two andthen Lauren, you can add on.
But number one is creating a task, a teamtask, that has meaning to it that doesn't
just seem like a project that we have todo to get a grade in the class, because
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if the students find meaning, especiallyif that project has some community
impact that goes beyond the classroom.
By the way, having a community partner,it's wonderful for team projects, because
it really does make students realize theimportance of the work they're doing.
So once you add that importancefactor into your team project,
that it's meaningful, it's worthsomething, that helps right away.
(25:18):
So as an instructor, that's the numberone thing is when you're designing the
project, make sure it has some impactthat the students see that can help
them get a job or help a communityorganization or something like that.
And number two is ongoing peerevaluation, and we stress this in
our book again and again, that peerevaluation needs to be not just at the
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end, when we're giving our final grade,where in finals week, we collect the
peer evaluation sheets and then putit on some learning management system.
They wouldn't know whatthey're going to get.
Instead, peer evaluation is somethingthat you should do in an ongoing
basis at least three times in thesemester, and in my class that I'm
teaching right now, I did it 10 times.
(26:03):
And so it was every week they didpeer evaluation, and they got feedback
every week on their peer evaluation.
So this way they can see what they'redoing and know how to change it,
and know where they can improve, thedevelopmental, formative opportunities
that we all want to give our students.
So, keeping team small is one way toreduce shirking or social loafing,
(26:27):
because it's a lot harder to hide whenthere are fewer people in the team.
And a lot of the research says five toseven is good, but it depends on what the
project is and what the class is like.
I've had three person teams that haveworked really well with projects.
So, keeping the team small, checkingin, checking in, checking in, so not
(26:49):
just having them evaluate each otherand maybe giving them time to talk
about those peer evaluations, which aresometimes really hard discussions to
have if somebody's not measuring up ordoing what they had signed on to do,
but instructor checking in, findingout what's happening, giving students a
few minutes at the end of class to talkabout their projects, and just walking
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around and hearing what they have to say.
We've also done more formalcheck-ins, where we've given
surveys and have them just indicatewhere they are in the project.
And we've done this sometimeswith anonymous surveys.
And one time we had, “Have you alreadypicked your topic?” We were two weeks
in, and half the teams hadn't pickedtheir topic yet, and there was a whole
(27:36):
process just for picking topic, gettingpermission, because it did involve
people outside of the classroom. So wewere like, “Okay, guys, you really need
to get through this.” And we needed to,on a regular basis, we need to go over
what those deadlines were for thosesorts of things that they were doing.
One of the things that we also did tokind of keep watch on what they were
(27:57):
doing, is we set up a Google folderfor each team in one of our classes
with instructor access, and everyonehad to write in the folder each week
what they had done for the project.
And sometimes they would write, “Well,I had a lacrosse tournament, so I didn't
get anything done, but this week I'm goingto do this.” We're like, “Okay, you get a
(28:17):
pass for this week.” But if I look and seesomeone hasn't read, hasn't put anything
into the Google folder for three weeks,like, how much are you contributing?
What's your role?
And are you letting the teamdown by not following through?
So it's a great way to keep track ofwhat's going on and to avoid that,
because it is a problem, people shirking.
(28:38):
One of the big things that we hearis, “Oh, I end up doing all the work
because people are contributing.”
Dang it, Fred.
So when faculty are using a mix ofindividual and team assignments,
what helps determine whether anassignment is more appropriate
for an individual or for a team?
(28:59):
Well, on that one, if it's somethingthat can be easily broken up, divided
up, and each person can take apartand then smush it back together.
It's really not a team assignment.
That's an individual assignmentthat's broken up for a group to do.
And one of our pet peeves, and oh, I'm notgoing to speak for Lauren here, but I have
(29:20):
so many of them, is that presentation,when you get to the end, and it's a
group project, and slide one looks oneway, and slide two looks another way,
and slide three looks totally different.
And, by the way, covers some of thesame things that were on slide one.
Yeah, that's a group projector an individual assignment
that's been shoved together.
So a team assignment hasto be fairly difficult.
(29:42):
It's okay to add some challenge to it.
So we have to make it challenging.
It has to have a lot of waysto get to the end point.
It can't be one single way, by theway, fancy word: path multiplicity.
And there has to be lots of differentendpoints that could all be successful.
That's solution multiplicity, andthese are the important parts.
(30:06):
It also needs to force studentsto use those different skills.
It needs to require thatthey collaborate to succeed.
I think the importance of interdependencein the project is probably the thing
that will help you realize whetheror not it's a good team project.
Doing a research paper,that's for an individual.
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And one of the issues that we often seewith people who aren't used to using
teams and are maybe starting out isthey might take an individual project
and give it to a group and say, “okay,here, do this, “and especially as
classes get bigger in some institutions,they might think, “Oh, it's easier.
Instead of giving this paper, I give thisresearch paper assignment to a team,” but
(30:52):
it's not the kind of thing that can bedone effectively, and they really need
to be designed specifically for teams.
And there are lots of great teamassignments out there, and we have a
bunch in our book and on our website.
I mean, we give away a lot of thiscontent, so there are lots of ways that
you can get help if you're looking tomake an effective team assignment and
(31:16):
also give feedback to each other as well.
Can you give just one example ofa really good team assignment?
I know that's hard when I say one.
One is hard.
I mean, we've had so manythat have been just really
interesting to see what happens.
My favorite one is when we hadthe students actually pick a
(31:36):
group on campus, a team, and do acommunication analysis, or a small
group analysis of their process.
And for example, we decided to keepit on campus because it was starting
to get too unwieldy to manage.
But they would have to go to say, astudent club, like the Student Government
(31:57):
Association Executive Committee, and say,“We have to observe your meeting at least
three times. Can we get your permission?”So that was one of the first steps, pick
a group, get permission, and we would makesure that people could remain anonymous,
although if it's the president of SGA,everybody kind of knows who that person
is, but they would observe these meetings.
(32:18):
They would have to collect data.
Some of them would do acommunication analysis, or they
would do a leadership assessment.
They always did post-meetingevaluations by the team members.
How did it go?
That sort of thing.
And one of the challenges for themwas not only getting the team, getting
to these meetings, but deciding whatdata were they going to collect?
(32:42):
So that was a whole big decision, becausewe gave them reams of instruments that
they could use, and then it culminatedin a report back to the class.
They had a portfolio of allthe information that they had
collected, and they did an oralteam presentation to the class.
And one of my favorite parts wasthat each team had another team
(33:05):
that they had to peer evaluate, andso when they were done, they had a
chance to give them feedback as well.
So at the final meeting of the semester,we asked students like: “What did you
learn about the team? What'd you learnabout yourself as a team member?”
And I just thought it was a great wayto use it, and we called them group
(33:26):
dynamic consultants, or something likethat, that they came in and did that.
So, I think that was my favorite.
I think that's a great example, Lauren.
It really required, and this is wherewe use those different skills to pick
the team, It really required somebodywho's good in analysis, somebody who's
a good leader, somebody who can talk tothe client well, and all those different
(33:47):
things where we want teams to succeed.
They need these skills, and theyhad to bring them together, each
working in their different lane, intheir different role, but pulling
it together and working together.
What are some ways that faculty canencourage the development of student
leadership skills or team leadershipskills, through these assignments.
Well, you know, team leadership is soimportant, and as we're talking about
(34:09):
the surveys out there, the NACE survey,the AAC&U survey, these are all talking
about the importance of leadership skills.
A Carnegie organization now has theLPP, the leadership for a public
purpose, designation for schools,and this is something where schools
can do better to structure leadershipopportunities for their students.
(34:32):
And a team project is the perfect place.
Now, what's really nice about ateam project is that the leadership,
and Lauren said this earlier, theleadership needs to be shared and
needs to rotate to some extent.
So it's a really good place for differentstudents to get those small-group
leadership skills, different fromsomebody who's up on a public stage or
(34:54):
a politician who has to show a vision.
These small group leadership skills arewhere our students can start to develop
in a very safe way, an environmentwhere they're getting feedback and
development opportunities, wherethey're not going to feel like their
job is at risk in these little groups.
And by the way, I'm goingto say that that's just not
(35:16):
the case for team projects.
It's also the case for the group workin your class when you have, and we do,
Lauren and I use those terms differently,a team project: long standing, they're
working together more collaboratively.
But there's a lot of times whereLauren and I would throw in a group
project, a group exercise one day,and we'd shuffle the groups up.
And I still do this.
(35:36):
And even in those small-group situations,having somebody step in to be the
leader, having somebody picked to bethe leader, have that rotate, make
sure different people get those skills.
So it's a great way for us aseducators of future leaders to
help people to develop the skillsin a psychologically safe manner.
And one of the things that we stress tothe students really continuously, but
(36:01):
leadership is a really good example ofhow do you answer a question when you
get to a job interview about leadership.
So if you go in and they say, “Well, tellme about your leadership,” and they say,
“Well, I was captain of the tennis team.”Well, yeah, that's an okay example, but
it's not the same as saying “I was theteam leader in a team project.” And these
(36:22):
are the things that we actually had todo, or if they said, “Tell me about a
time when you were able to overcome aproblem working on a team” and having
the leader being able to explain thatcan be really powerful when they get into
a job interview, especially as the jobmarket has gotten tighter and tighter,
our students need to have a little bit ofan edge when they get into the interview.
(36:45):
And we do have a leadershipassessment tool in the book that
we've created that anybody can use.
It's for students.
So it's in our student section.
And again, as Lauren said,all those things are available
to any users of our book.
We have all those studentthings, all the student handouts,
that people can download.
So the leadership assessment tool is agreat one to use, especially if you want
to show students how they have developed.
(37:06):
So I have, at times, given that atthe beginning of the semester and
then given it at the end of thesemester again to help them see.
What's funny is, some studentswill actually go down, but in their
reflection about why they went down,they write, “I didn't realize all the
things I didn't know.” So they areactually more calibrated by the end,
(37:28):
even if they've dropped sometimes.
One of the things that faculty sometimesfind challenging is how to do team
projects in an online or virtual setting.
Do you have any suggestions for how teamscan work well, in those environments?
Oh, we have a lot of ideas.
We do have a whole chapter in thebook, and we've written about this
(37:49):
in a number of different places.
One of the big things to keep inmind is that it's important to
keep the team small in an onlineclass, because the more people you
have, the more difficult it can be.
Also need to require the students to setup a time when they can meet together,
(38:10):
even virtually, but have a face-to-facekind of meeting time, because if they
think they're going to just be ableto do the whole project by sending
text messages or putting input into aGoogle Doc, that's going to be pretty
challenging to be able to finish that.
So those are two things that I thinkare important, and I know Tim's done
(38:30):
more online teaching than I have, andprobably has some more and better ideas.
Well, what Lauren talked about areactually, absolutely, the best ways to
start, and that idea of face-to-face time,whether it's Zoom, I don't mean that they
need to be in person, because a lot oftimes I work with students that are in
different states, but that face time, thatZoom meeting, whatever it is, to kick off
(38:55):
with that and then continue using it, likeLauren said on a regular basis, is great.
Now I do think, as theinstructor, we make assumptions.
I am going to admit my age here.
There was no digital work when I startedmy teaching career, and this is my
second career, so it's a very differentenvironment, and our students grew
(39:16):
up with this stuff, yet I find thatthey have no idea about all the tools
we have that are available to them.
So as an instructor, you do needto spend a little time helping
them to work through the tools.
They see everything as a group chat.
I have to say, you know, not all ofthem, but so many of the students
just say, “Oh, we have a group chat.
That's how we're going to communicate.”And I'm like, “Yeah, it's only one
(39:38):
little thing of the many things.” Soyou have to explain the tools you have,
and then, to some extent, teach tothose tools, and you have to make sure
the students know how to match the toolto the task, because, for instance, if
you have conflict in your team, that'snot a group chat resolution, that's
a phone call or something like that.
(39:59):
It's a different way to deal with that.
So one of the exercises… Rebecca, youasked about the exercises… and one of
the exercises we have is what toolsdo they have, and then how they're
going to use those tools to solvedifferent parts of their team project
when they're going to use each one.
Now, it always helps to havea leader who's organized and
(40:19):
keeping the team on task.
So if you have somebody with onlineskills and has done this before who's
leading the team, that's also helpful.
In an online team, it’s probablymore important to have someone who's
an official leader, either that theteam agrees on of one person, or even
that the professor might suggest thatthis person should be the leader.
(40:42):
And the structure of the project is soimportant in both online and face-to-face
classes, but especially in online, becausethey actually just need that structure
for how they're going to be able to do itwithout seeing each other all the time.
One of the things I've done when I'vehad group projects online is to have
a discussion forum where studentswere given some choices in terms of
(41:06):
what types of projects they could do,and I just had them state what they
most preferred to work on, and alsowhat their time availability was so
they could match themselves that way.
There wasn't as much of an issue withan online class of students knowing each
other, because many of them had nevermet before in other classes, but at least
they could try to find some ways in whichthey could agree on topics, but also do
(41:28):
it in a way where they would be availableat the same times, because some of the
students were working every day, some ofthe students were working nights, some
of the students had a couple of jobs.
Some of the students were taking care ofill relatives, and their time flexibility
was limited, but there was always someoneelse in the class that had similar time
constraints, and it worked pretty well.
(41:49):
I will say that I recently had anexperience, and to be very personal,
I have a daughter who just graduatedcollege, and she had a professor
who said, “you have to meet one ofthese three times,” and she was a D1
athlete and worked outside of schooland had a busy life, and none of
those times worked with her schedule.
So John, I really like that,because the idea is, let the
(42:11):
students set their own times.
Don't pick them for them, becauseour life is very different.
They may want to meet at 11o'clock on a Sunday night.
I will be snoring in therecliner by then, I guarantee it.
Well, and we also have to considerthat in online environments, we
might not be in the same time zone.
Exactly.
Our friend Mike Palanski, who's atRochester Institute of Technology,
(42:34):
I still remember this so well.
He did one of our video interviewsthat we posted, and he talked about
the importance of calendar courtesywhen you're working in online teams.
That was his term.
So Mike says you have to have thatcalendar courtesy to recognize that
it doesn't always have to be at mytime on my 9 to 5 schedule when you're
(42:56):
working in an international team.
And I will say this is a side note,another personal thing, but once I didn't
get to my book club until nine o'clock.
I told them, I have ameeting at eight o'clock.
And they all laughed at me, and they said,“Is he meeting with somebody from India?”
And when I got to book club a littleafter nine, they said, “Oh, you're meeting
with somebody from India.” I said, “I am.
(43:18):
I'm meeting with one of my editors onone of my books, who could meet at 8pm
and that's what worked for both of us.
It was in the morning for her.”Now, yes, you do have to have
that calendar courtesy, sothanks to Mike Palanski for that.
Do you have any advice for facultygetting started with team projects?
Yes, we do.
So if a faculty member has never doneany group work or team projects, we
(43:39):
recommend they start small by doing somegroup work in the classroom, and that
can be as simple as taking content forclass that day and having discussion
questions, or having them do a processcalled learning through discussion, which
is more structured, where students do thereading for the class and then come in
and the professor can rotate around andsee if the teams are really understanding
(44:03):
what it is that they're talking about.
And then when you're ready to moveon to a team project, we would
recommend that you start small.
So don't start with something semesterlong, maybe a project that could just
take two or three weeks, and start smallin terms of the content and also how
much you're demanding of the studentsand how much you're able to follow
(44:25):
along with what they're working on.
So we have an article about that inInside Higher Ed that was published
just a couple of months ago abouthow to start doing a team project.
And we can link to that in the show notes.
So we always wrap upby asking, what's next?
Well, we continue our collaboration,as you've heard already, we've been
(44:47):
writing articles, we put out videos onLinkedIn, and our Making Team Projects
Work Facebook page at least every week,and sometimes more, and we are going
to continue to figure out what's nextfor our collaboration, with Lauren in
Arizona and me in upstate New York, it'sactually continued to work really well.
We've got some other things,Lauren, you want to add to that?
(45:08):
Yeah, we have been doing someseminars and workshops for people.
We've been doing a lotof series for LinkedIn.
And this semester, we've been doing justshort videos giving quick tips and then
linking to some of the other items thatwe have on our website and in the book.
So we've got lots of content out there,and we've been to a few conferences.
(45:32):
One of the conferences that we talkedabout the idea of moving from doing
a lecture to working on teams was atthe Team-Based Learning Collaborative,
because if you don't have a requirementthat people use team-based learning,
sometimes it's really hard to get yourcolleagues interested in doing that.
So we have worked on that sortof thing, moving from lecture to
(45:55):
using teams and giving people thosetools that they can take with them.
Well, thank you.
It's been great talking to you again,and one of the suggestions I'd make
for those people getting startedis picking up a copy of your book.
Thank you.
We'd be very happy.
Thank you so much for having us,and we really appreciate the time.
And again, all the student resources areavailable for anybody who has the book.
(46:18):
We're happy to share those so youcan download them and use them.
And it's great to have your bookto provide that structured learning
opportunity for how to make teams.
Oh, thank you.
That's great to hear.
If you've enjoyed this podcast, pleasesubscribe and leave a review on Apple
Podcasts or your favorite podcast service.
(46:41):
To continue the conversation, join uson our Tea for Teaching Facebook page.
You can find show notes, transcripts andother materials on teaforteaching.com.
Music by Michael Gary Brewer.
Teamwork skills are highly valued byemployers but most faculty have not been
trained to create effective team projects.
In this episode, we discuss a resourcefaculty can use to create more
effective team assignments and projects.
(00:21):
Thanks for joining us for Tea forTeaching, an informal discussion
of innovative and effectivepractices in teaching and learning.
This podcast series is hostedby John Kane, an economist...
...and Rebecca Mushtare,a graphic designer...
...and features guests doing importantresearch and advocacy work to make
higher education more inclusiveand supportive of all learners.
(00:52):
Our guests today are TimFranz and Lauren Vicker.
Tim is a Professor in the PsychologyDepartment at St. John Fisher University
and Lauren is a Professor Emeritus in theDepartment of Media and Communication,
also at St. John Fisher University.
They are the authors of MakingTeam Projects Work: A College
Instructor’s Guide to SuccessfulStudent Groupwork which has been
(01:13):
recently released by Routledge.
Welcome back, Tim and Lauren.
Thanks for having us.
Really appreciate being here.
Yeah, it's great to be back.
Lauren, are you drinking tea?
I am drinking tea.
I am drinking my favoritemorning brew, which is Typhoo.
Their tagline is great British tea since1903, so there's a big history there.
(01:38):
Nice.
And Tim?
Well, I am drinking the samething as last time you had me on.
And though Lauren is talking about morningtea, I have switched over to my decaf
green tea, which I drink in the afternoon.
And especially with how cold it is herein upstate New York, as you both know,
(01:58):
I'm using it to warm my hands too.
It's a good solution for that, for sure.]
And Rebecca?
I have a London Fog.
Is that another one you bought in London?
Yes.
I figured.
Although, coming soon,teas from Switzerland.
Ohh.
I finally unpacked them.
(02:20):
Well, I just have a Prince ofWales tea from my local Wegmans.
So we invited you here todayto discuss your most recent
book, Making Team Projects Work.
First, though, can you tell us a littlebit about your long-term collaboration?
So I was at St. John Fisher alreadyfor a couple of decades, when Tim
(02:41):
arrived, and the Department of Media andCommunication, we had a course in small
group communication, we called it, andthe Psychology Department had a course
called group dynamics, and some studentswere talking about, “Hey, they do a lot
of the same things over in Psych.” So Ilooked up Tim, and we started talking and
(03:03):
looking at the classes, and decided thatthere was enough overlap that we could
offer it, co-teaching it, so that it wouldbe cross listed between psychology and
communications, and the more we startedteaching and coming up with ideas, the
more we realized that there was a needout there to talk more about groups and
(03:24):
teams, especially in classroom settings.
So that kind of just started thewhole thing where we were working
together and just had a great time.
It was fun to bounce ideas off each otherfor every class, and we were always there
for all of the work with the students.
And that's been a long-termcollaboration, hasn't it?
(03:46):
Yes, we started workingtogether years ago.
I think, Lauren, the first time wetaught together was like 2004, 2003.
It was a long time ago, and weco-taught together for a long time
before we realized we have more tocontribute than just co-teaching.
And how did this newbook project come about?
Well, we had started off, as you bothknow, from last time, we started off with
(04:10):
two self-published books when we firststarted the project, which was born out
of us thinking about how what we haddone really applies to other people.
And then we did a quick survey of, Ithink we had about 300 faculty members
answer our survey, and realized that alot of people don't know how to run team
(04:30):
projects well, but to keep the booksinexpensive, we self published them on
Amazon, and then we learned that marketingis hard, very hard, and so we decided
to move the book over to a publisher.
And we got picked up.
We chose Rutledge Taylorand Francis publisher.
Both of us had past experience withthem with other books, and so it was a
(04:52):
real good synergy, and it’s been a greatworking relationship with them as well.
So we moved it over to a bookwith a publisher to help make
the marketing better, really.
Right, and the big difference too isthat we had a separate book for students,
and Routledge wanted us to combine them.
So in this new book, they areboth together, the faculty version
(05:16):
as well as the student handouts.
That's great.
As you alluded to earlier, oneof the NACE competencies is the
development of skills in teamwork.
But have many faculty received trainingin how to effectively assist students
in developing the skills necessary?
Well, we didn't ask that questionspecifically in the survey, but
(05:36):
we assume that not very manyhave received formal training.
For example, there are a lot of schools,especially graduate programs, in medical
education that uses team-based learning.
Which is a very structured way to useteams in the classroom, and people learn
how to set up teams there and how to dothe TBL process, but they don't get a
(06:00):
lot of those group dynamic things thatwe like to talk about, like, what do
you do when the team is in conflict?
Or how do you have a team workmost effectively if you're teaching
an asynchronous online class?
Those sorts of thingsthat we realized are gaps.
But we also found that there are stillmany, many faculty who are just lecturing,
(06:23):
and they tell us, “Well, that's theway I like to teach,” you know, that
old sage on the stage sort of thing.
And so, we feel that there's such aneed out there, and that's a lot of what
we're trying to do is get the word out.
Yeah, what we found in that survey is thatthere is a sizable, I'm not going to say
majority, but a sizable number of facultywho are actually resistant to doing group
(06:46):
work or teamwork in the classroom becausethey say it's too hard and doesn't work.
But honestly, our interpretation isthat they're not doing it well enough
yet, that if they made some very slightchanges to what they do, they could
pretty easily improve their groupwork, their teamwork in their classes.
And as you said, the NACE survey andalso recent surveys by AAC&U, they
(07:11):
also put teamwork as the number one ornumber two things that employers want.
So as faculty members, we think it'sreally important to help prepare our
students to be better team members, andso that's what we want out of this work.
So one of the reasons we tried tomake the book inexpensive was because
we wanted students and facultyto be able to use it very easily.
(07:32):
So who is the target audience?
Is it designed just for faculty, or isit for faculty and students as well?
Or are the handouts just a supplementfor faculty to use with students?
Well, the book is designed for collegeprofessors, and we want to point
out it's at every level, from, youknow, entering community college,
all the way through professional anddoctoral programs, anyone can use the
(07:56):
information in the book, the studenthandouts, you wouldn't probably ask
the students to buy a copy of the book.
The student handouts are available for thefaculty to use to supplement what they're
doing, and we have those available.
We share those with people in a formatwhere they can make copies and that
sort of thing, if they want to do that.
(08:17):
But the target audience is, for the mostpart, college professors, although I
have to say we did a whole series aboutwhat works best in teams with young
professionals, former students of ourswho were working, and it was a great
series because they showed that theconcepts that we talk about, yeah, in
academia, but there are people who areworking professionally who need those
(08:41):
tips as well, especially if they haven'thad any formal training in how to direct
a team or how to manage co workers.
There are a lot of assumptions, thatwe're maybe just born with the ability
to work in teams, or that you walkinto a classroom and have those skill
sets, and most of the time, peoplehave never been trained in any kind
of way about how to work in a group.
(09:01):
Exactly.
Throughout your book, you rely on asystems input-process-output model.
Can you provide our listenerswith an overview of this model?
So the input-process-output modelcomes from really engineering and
other types of areas like that, whereyou bring inputs in, you process the
data, you have outputs that come out.
(09:22):
And it was applied years agoby Steiner and many others in
the group dynamics literature.
So it's actually not a new model.
It's one that's in the small-groupcommunication and small-group decision
making, small-groups literature,and it says that there are things
that people bring, the inputs to agroup, and then there's the stuff
that happens in the group, and thenthere's what the group gets out of it.
(09:46):
And so the inputs are things likethe contexts that people are embedded
in, the skills that the team membershave, or the task that they're working
on, which turns out to be reallyimportant, and the processes are what
happens when they're working together.
So this is the good and the bad.
It's the conflict thathappens, that people run into.
(10:07):
It's the decision making processes,but it's also where somebody says
something and somebody else has anotheridea, and you get some synergies.
So, it's all the things that happenwhen they're working together.
Now, in the outputs, as professors,what we're often concerned about
is the task-related outputs.
What can we give them a grade on?
What is the objective thing thatthey're working on, but there's also a
(10:31):
lot of social outputs that people get.
I mean, we're social animals by nature,and people get a lot of social outputs.
Get to know people.
In fact, I always like to say,at my nephew's wedding, my
nephew and his wife met at Keukacollege during a team project.
That was their initial meeting.
And I say, well, sometimes youmight even get married after your
(10:53):
team project and have two kids.
There are other things that people get.
That's the input-process-output model.
And in the book, we literally walk througheach part of the input, each part of the
process, each part of the output, so thatpeople can see where to improve their
teams, both faculty members and students.
(11:13):
And this was also the structure of the waythat we taught our group dynamics class.
So one thing we acknowledge is we hadthe luxury of teaching a whole class
in how to make teams work better.
And so a lot of times we know that facultyhave so much content to cover that they
can't do a whole week talking aboutleadership in teams, so that's one of the
(11:35):
things that we're trying to help them do.
But we taught this way, and I wasgoing through some old notes from
my PhD dissertation back at theUniversity of Pittsburgh, and I
actually found a model that lookedquite similar to the input-output model
based on small group communication.
So it's something that'sbeen with us for a long time.
(11:55):
We feel it gives people the idea ofhow to organize their thinking about
teams and how to make them work better.
Throughout the book, in each of yourchapters, you have a common structure.
Could you give our listeners an overviewof what that structure looks like?
I'll start this becauseI like to tell a story.
And speaking of stories… when we wrotethe self published version, we had
(12:19):
every story in every chapter begin withsomebody by the name of Fred and Lauren
and I, you'll see us laughing when we usethat word, that was not his real name.
But I mean, this is back in 2004, 2006when we first started working together,
we had that student who did, not allthe things, but caused struggles with
(12:43):
his team again and again and again.
So we love to use that Fred name, eventhough it's not in the new book, we've
switched the names around, because itreminds us that there are times where
you have those one or two studentswho cause their teams to struggle.
And so now the stories are really aconglomeration of multiple experiences,
(13:05):
not just from us, but from other facultymembers we've talked to, interviewed,
it comes from our discussions with them.
So each one starts with a story to tryto show people it's real, it's honest.
This is what, as a faculty member, even afaculty member who wrote the book and does
this, I had a Fred last semester, evenwith all the procedures, it still happens.
(13:28):
And we've all had studentslike Fred at some point.
I bet you some of us havecolleagues named Fred.
That's certainly true.
So we start with a story, and thenwe have some reflection questions,
asking the reader to think about,has this ever happened to you?
What did you do?
What would you recommend if youknew someone in this situation?
(13:50):
And then we go into the content forthat particular chapter and talk
about what things are most important,what some of the issues are, and then
how to resolve some of those issues.
And the second section of eachchapter is the student section.
And so this is basically just a pareddown version of the instructor section.
(14:12):
It includes some content and theory andthat sort of thing, but it mostly includes
the activities for students to do.
So that's where we have handouts wherethe professor can make copies and put
students into teams and have them do that.
So that is the basic frameworkfor each of the chapters.
And starting with a narrative can bea really effective way of engaging
(14:35):
people and making the issues memorable.
Can you talk a little bit aboutsome of the student activities that
you just mentioned that come inthe form of handouts and things?
So, in each chapter, we haveactivities that really are focused
on the content in that chapter.
Some of them requirethe students to reflect.
Some of them are specificactivities to help them develop.
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So, for instance, one that we love, andit's a great icebreaker, is the group
IQ test, and we use that right away,where they take an IQ test, really not
an IQ test, as you can imagine, butthey take a little, I think it's 13 item
quiz, individually, and then they takeit again as a group, and watch how much
differently they do in a group versuswhen they were doing it individually.
(15:24):
And it helps them to see sometimes anindividual does better than the group,
sometimes the group does better than anyof the individuals, and what causes that?
It's a real good way to get peoplethinking about group work and teamwork.
But we also have exercises.
Again, in every chapter, there's exercisesthat help to hit that content home.
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For the faculty members, for example,we have an exercise about how to create
a team task, which is really something.
It's one of the inputs.
And any task we use as professorsreally needs to be focused on a
team and not an individual, andthere is a difference about that.
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In the leadership chapter, studentscan take leadership assessments and
see how they rate themselves, and thatway, that will foster a discussion in
the team about should we pick a leader,or should we have shared leadership,
and what are we going to do if we'vegot a conflict with the leader?
And so we try to make all of theactivities relevant to whatever is in
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the content of that particular chapter.
One of the things you talk aboutin the book is best practices
in terms of how to form teams.
What are some of yourrecommendations for that?
I know students generally prefer pickingtheir own teams, but you argue that
that's probably not a very good strategy.
Could you talk a little bit about that?
Never, never, never letthem pick their own teams.
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You just don't get the diversityof people, ideas, backgrounds,
experiences that you need to reallydo a great job on a team project.
You need lots of inputs into the team.
And when students pick their own teams,they pick their friends, they pick
people that they already know, thatthey have things in common with, and
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it really hinders their ability to doa good job, and it also can test the
bonds of friendship, because inevitably,they're going to be issues on the team.
And sometimes people think, Well,I'm friends with these people.
I can let this slide, or I canmiss this particular meeting,
because I know them really well,and they know I'll come through.
And so it's really important… the numberone thing is not to let students do
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that and tell them that at the outset.
At first they're disappointed,but then you explain the
importance of having to do it.
So we go on from there to talk aboutways that you can put the teams together.
Tim has a good one that Ithink he can explain about the
questionnaire that students use.
So a perfect example thissemester, my students, in my…
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it's called workplace psychology.
In that class, they do a project, andat the beginning of the semester, I was
very clear that they're not going to picktheir own teams, just like Lauren said,
and I used a structured approach for that,which means I give them a questionnaire.
Now I use Qualtrics, an online survey, andI know what skills they need to succeed
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on this project, and so they have toanswer questions, self rating, better than
nothing, but they’re self rating theirideas about how they are with writing,
with analysis, with organization, withleadership, with working as a team member,
and I have more too, but I pick theskills that are necessary for success,
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and then I make sure that every team isbalanced so they have somebody who rated
on a five-point scale of four or five ineach area, so they can feel comfortable
knowing that their team does have theskills to succeed in this project.
And I will tell you, Lauren and I arereally passionate about this whole
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idea of don't let people pick theirown teams, find a better way to do it.
And the number one reason, otherthan all the theoretical reasons,
and what the research shows, and ifyou look in the team based learning
literature, they're very clear, andthey have the research to back this up.
But there’s a student I had, where I'lljust call her Jane, and Jane saw the world
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a little differently than most of theother students in the class, and I'm still
choked up about this because I was swayed.
This is 15 years ago, when I wasswayed to let them pick their
own team, and nobody picked Jane.
Now Jane was actually a straight Astudent and really thoughtful and
hard working, but Jane was quirky,and nobody picked Jane, and Jane was
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in tears at the end of the class.
And is really, is that thetype of situation we want
to set up in our classes.
Our classes should encouragethat knowledge diversity.
Bring people in.
That's the whole reason we use teams,is to have a lot of different voices
and opinions so that we can makemore informed and better decisions.
So let's utilize that.
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And the main thing in terms ofthe students, is to make sure the
process is transparent, so theyunderstand how the teams were put
together, how they were formed.
I even had one of my public speakingclasses, I told them what the
parameters were (20:20):
you can't pick your own teams, and I let them suggest them.
And it turned out they had a great idea.
We made sure that people fromdifferent majors were in teams
together, and that people who haddifferent experiences in the field
of public speaking, how much they hadalready done coming into the class.
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And it turned out those were great teams.
So it's just making sure that the studentsunderstand that this is what's important.
And remember, when they get into theirprofessional settings, you don't have a
choice of who you're going to work with.
You're in a certain work group, or have acertain manager you report to, and that's
the group that you have to work with.
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You have to learn how to work with them.
So it's really goodtraining for the future.
And I forgot to close the loop aboutworkplace psychology, because they did
tell me in mid-November that they werereally bummed that they didn't get to
pick their own teams at the beginningof the semester, but they loved by
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mid-November that we did it the way wedid, because they knew they could all
succeed on the project, and they actuallyadmitted that they met some new people.
So it worked out well, I don't know ifanybody's getting married like my nephew.
One of the things you advocate foris the formation of team charters.
Can you talk a little bitabout what a team charter is
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and what they should address?
So we let the students know that it'simportant that they set up some guidelines
at the beginning of the semester.
Occasionally, we've actually donethis with the class, where we've put
the students in teams and have themgenerate some norms that they think
should govern their discussions, andwe'll post that on the course management
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system, and then if something's goingwrong, we can always go back to it.
A team charter is a little moreformal, but when a team is working
on a big project, it's a good ideafor them to sit down and decide
how they're going to run things.
Are they going to, for example, setup a common meeting time, which we
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really stress, that students lookat their schedules and figure out
all of their other responsibilities.
When can they meet everyweek outside of class?
They have to have a common meetingtime, and that's really important.
How are they going to handle conflict?
How are they going to make decisions?
Tim and I, this week we're doinga LinkedIn series on problem
solving and this week, we've beentalking about decision rules.
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Is it going to be majority rule?
Students like to do majority rule.
But then, if you're in a five-persongroup and you're in the two that don't
get your choice, how committed areyou going to feel to the decision?
So do you want to work with consensus?
Are you going to appoint one leaderor are you going to rotate leadership.
What are you going todo when you get stuck?
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Are you going to go to theprofessor first, or are you going
to try to work it out yourselves?
So all of those things, and in theteam charter, it's great if the
students actually write those thingsdown and have everyone in the team
sign off on it, because it givesthem something they can go back to
later on, when inevitably, they'vegot some issue they need to work out.
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I actually did a presentation, Lauren ison the presentation, just about a year
and a half ago, at NITOP, the NationalInstitute for Teaching of Psychology,
about how to do those charters andone way I do them, and this is what I
talked about at NITOP, is working itaround our obligations to one another,
rather than our expectations of oneanother, it's what we owe one another.
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And it puts a different spin on it, andallows people to see that, for their group
to succeed, they have to do something.
It's not what they get from others,but what they have to do and what they
owe, so and again, this is somethingthat I presented and Lauren wasn't
at the conference, but we're both onthe conference presentation for that.
One of the things you've alreadytalked about is having these team
charters as a way of reducing thelikelihood of problems and also perhaps
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providing a simpler way of resolvingthem, since they had all agreed to it.
But are there other things thatinstructors can do to help resolve
issues of shirking by individualmembers, because that's one of the most
common problems we see with teamwork.
So I'm going to say two things, andI'm sure Lauren will have even more
than this, because we have so manyideas to help with this, that lack of
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motivation, that free riding, socialloafing, that happens in so many teams.
So I'll just talk about two andthen Lauren, you can add on.
But number one is creating a task, a teamtask, that has meaning to it that doesn't
just seem like a project that we have todo to get a grade in the class, because
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if the students find meaning, especiallyif that project has some community
impact that goes beyond the classroom.
By the way, having a community partner,it's wonderful for team projects, because
it really does make students realize theimportance of the work they're doing.
So once you add that importancefactor into your team project,
that it's meaningful, it's worthsomething, that helps right away.
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So as an instructor, that's the numberone thing is when you're designing the
project, make sure it has some impactthat the students see that can help
them get a job or help a communityorganization or something like that.
And number two is ongoing peerevaluation, and we stress this in
our book again and again, that peerevaluation needs to be not just at the
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end, when we're giving our final grade,where in finals week, we collect the
peer evaluation sheets and then putit on some learning management system.
They wouldn't know whatthey're going to get.
Instead, peer evaluation is somethingthat you should do in an ongoing
basis at least three times in thesemester, and in my class that I'm
teaching right now, I did it 10 times.
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And so it was every week they didpeer evaluation, and they got feedback
every week on their peer evaluation.
So this way they can see what they'redoing and know how to change it,
and know where they can improve, thedevelopmental, formative opportunities
that we all want to give our students.
So, keeping team small is one way toreduce shirking or social loafing,
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because it's a lot harder to hide whenthere are fewer people in the team.
And a lot of the research says five toseven is good, but it depends on what the
project is and what the class is like.
I've had three person teams that haveworked really well with projects.
So, keeping the team small, checkingin, checking in, checking in, so not
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just having them evaluate each otherand maybe giving them time to talk
about those peer evaluations, which aresometimes really hard discussions to
have if somebody's not measuring up ordoing what they had signed on to do,
but instructor checking in, findingout what's happening, giving students a
few minutes at the end of class to talkabout their projects, and just walking
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around and hearing what they have to say.
We've also done more formalcheck-ins, where we've given
surveys and have them just indicatewhere they are in the project.
And we've done this sometimeswith anonymous surveys.
And one time we had, “Have you alreadypicked your topic?” We were two weeks
in, and half the teams hadn't pickedtheir topic yet, and there was a whole
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process just for picking topic, gettingpermission, because it did involve
people outside of the classroom. So wewere like, “Okay, guys, you really need
to get through this.” And we needed to,on a regular basis, we need to go over
what those deadlines were for thosesorts of things that they were doing.
One of the things that we also did tokind of keep watch on what they were
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doing, is we set up a Google folderfor each team in one of our classes
with instructor access, and everyonehad to write in the folder each week
what they had done for the project.
And sometimes they would write, “Well,I had a lacrosse tournament, so I didn't
get anything done, but this week I'm goingto do this.” We're like, “Okay, you get a
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pass for this week.” But if I look and seesomeone hasn't read, hasn't put anything
into the Google folder for three weeks,like, how much are you contributing?
What's your role?
And are you letting the teamdown by not following through?
So it's a great way to keep track ofwhat's going on and to avoid that,
because it is a problem, people shirking.
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One of the big things that we hearis, “Oh, I end up doing all the work
because people are contributing.”
Dang it, Fred.
So when faculty are using a mix ofindividual and team assignments,
what helps determine whether anassignment is more appropriate
for an individual or for a team?
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Well, on that one, if it's somethingthat can be easily broken up, divided
up, and each person can take apartand then smush it back together.
It's really not a team assignment.
That's an individual assignmentthat's broken up for a group to do.
And one of our pet peeves, and oh, I'm notgoing to speak for Lauren here, but I have
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so many of them, is that presentation,when you get to the end, and it's a
group project, and slide one looks oneway, and slide two looks another way,
and slide three looks totally different.
And, by the way, covers some of thesame things that were on slide one.
Yeah, that's a group projector an individual assignment
that's been shoved together.
So a team assignment hasto be fairly difficult.
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It's okay to add some challenge to it.
So we have to make it challenging.
It has to have a lot of waysto get to the end point.
It can't be one single way, by theway, fancy word: path multiplicity.
And there has to be lots of differentendpoints that could all be successful.
That's solution multiplicity, andthese are the important parts.
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It also needs to force studentsto use those different skills.
It needs to require thatthey collaborate to succeed.
I think the importance of interdependencein the project is probably the thing
that will help you realize whetheror not it's a good team project.
Doing a research paper,that's for an individual.
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And one of the issues that we often seewith people who aren't used to using
teams and are maybe starting out isthey might take an individual project
and give it to a group and say, “okay,here, do this, “and especially as
classes get bigger in some institutions,they might think, “Oh, it's easier.
Instead of giving this paper, I give thisresearch paper assignment to a team,” but
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it's not the kind of thing that can bedone effectively, and they really need
to be designed specifically for teams.
And there are lots of great teamassignments out there, and we have a
bunch in our book and on our website.
I mean, we give away a lot of thiscontent, so there are lots of ways that
you can get help if you're looking tomake an effective team assignment and
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also give feedback to each other as well.
Can you give just one example ofa really good team assignment?
I know that's hard when I say one.
One is hard.
I mean, we've had so manythat have been just really
interesting to see what happens.
My favorite one is when we hadthe students actually pick a
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group on campus, a team, and do acommunication analysis, or a small
group analysis of their process.
And for example, we decided to keepit on campus because it was starting
to get too unwieldy to manage.
But they would have to go to say, astudent club, like the Student Government
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Association Executive Committee, and say,“We have to observe your meeting at least
three times. Can we get your permission?”So that was one of the first steps, pick
a group, get permission, and we would makesure that people could remain anonymous,
although if it's the president of SGA,everybody kind of knows who that person
is, but they would observe these meetings.
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They would have to collect data.
Some of them would do acommunication analysis, or they
would do a leadership assessment.
They always did post-meetingevaluations by the team members.
How did it go?
That sort of thing.
And one of the challenges for themwas not only getting the team, getting
to these meetings, but deciding whatdata were they going to collect?
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So that was a whole big decision, becausewe gave them reams of instruments that
they could use, and then it culminatedin a report back to the class.
They had a portfolio of allthe information that they had
collected, and they did an oralteam presentation to the class.
And one of my favorite parts wasthat each team had another team
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that they had to peer evaluate, andso when they were done, they had a
chance to give them feedback as well.
So at the final meeting of the semester,we asked students like: “What did you
learn about the team? What'd you learnabout yourself as a team member?”
And I just thought it was a great wayto use it, and we called them group
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dynamic consultants, or something likethat, that they came in and did that.
So, I think that was my favorite.
I think that's a great example, Lauren.
It really required, and this is wherewe use those different skills to pick
the team, It really required somebodywho's good in analysis, somebody who's
a good leader, somebody who can talk tothe client well, and all those different
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things where we want teams to succeed.
They need these skills, and theyhad to bring them together, each
working in their different lane, intheir different role, but pulling
it together and working together.
What are some ways that faculty canencourage the development of student
leadership skills or team leadershipskills, through these assignments.
Well, you know, team leadership is soimportant, and as we're talking about
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the surveys out there, the NACE survey,the AAC&U survey, these are all talking
about the importance of leadership skills.
A Carnegie organization now has theLPP, the leadership for a public
purpose, designation for schools,and this is something where schools
can do better to structure leadershipopportunities for their students.
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And a team project is the perfect place.
Now, what's really nice about ateam project is that the leadership,
and Lauren said this earlier, theleadership needs to be shared and
needs to rotate to some extent.
So it's a really good place for differentstudents to get those small-group
leadership skills, different fromsomebody who's up on a public stage or
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a politician who has to show a vision.
These small group leadership skills arewhere our students can start to develop
in a very safe way, an environmentwhere they're getting feedback and
development opportunities, wherethey're not going to feel like their
job is at risk in these little groups.
And by the way, I'm goingto say that that's just not
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the case for team projects.
It's also the case for the group workin your class when you have, and we do,
Lauren and I use those terms differently,a team project: long standing, they're
working together more collaboratively.
But there's a lot of times whereLauren and I would throw in a group
project, a group exercise one day,and we'd shuffle the groups up.
And I still do this.
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And even in those small-group situations,having somebody step in to be the
leader, having somebody picked to bethe leader, have that rotate, make
sure different people get those skills.
So it's a great way for us aseducators of future leaders to
help people to develop the skillsin a psychologically safe manner.
And one of the things that we stress tothe students really continuously, but
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leadership is a really good example ofhow do you answer a question when you
get to a job interview about leadership.
So if you go in and they say, “Well, tellme about your leadership,” and they say,
“Well, I was captain of the tennis team.”Well, yeah, that's an okay example, but
it's not the same as saying “I was theteam leader in a team project.” And these
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are the things that we actually had todo, or if they said, “Tell me about a
time when you were able to overcome aproblem working on a team” and having
the leader being able to explain thatcan be really powerful when they get into
a job interview, especially as the jobmarket has gotten tighter and tighter,
our students need to have a little bit ofan edge when they get into the interview.
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And we do have a leadershipassessment tool in the book that
we've created that anybody can use.
It's for students.
So it's in our student section.
And again, as Lauren said,all those things are available
to any users of our book.
We have all those studentthings, all the student handouts,
that people can download.
So the leadership assessment tool is agreat one to use, especially if you want
to show students how they have developed.
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So I have, at times, given that atthe beginning of the semester and
then given it at the end of thesemester again to help them see.
What's funny is, some studentswill actually go down, but in their
reflection about why they went down,they write, “I didn't realize all the
things I didn't know.” So they areactually more calibrated by the end,
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even if they've dropped sometimes.
One of the things that faculty sometimesfind challenging is how to do team
projects in an online or virtual setting.
Do you have any suggestions for how teamscan work well, in those environments?
Oh, we have a lot of ideas.
We do have a whole chapter in thebook, and we've written about this
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in a number of different places.
One of the big things to keep inmind is that it's important to
keep the team small in an onlineclass, because the more people you
have, the more difficult it can be.
Also need to require the students to setup a time when they can meet together,
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even virtually, but have a face-to-facekind of meeting time, because if they
think they're going to just be ableto do the whole project by sending
text messages or putting input into aGoogle Doc, that's going to be pretty
challenging to be able to finish that.
So those are two things that I thinkare important, and I know Tim's done
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more online teaching than I have, andprobably has some more and better ideas.
Well, what Lauren talked about areactually, absolutely, the best ways to
start, and that idea of face-to-face time,whether it's Zoom, I don't mean that they
need to be in person, because a lot oftimes I work with students that are in
different states, but that face time, thatZoom meeting, whatever it is, to kick off
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with that and then continue using it, likeLauren said on a regular basis, is great.
Now I do think, as theinstructor, we make assumptions.
I am going to admit my age here.
There was no digital work when I startedmy teaching career, and this is my
second career, so it's a very differentenvironment, and our students grew
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up with this stuff, yet I find thatthey have no idea about all the tools
we have that are available to them.
So as an instructor, you do needto spend a little time helping
them to work through the tools.
They see everything as a group chat.
I have to say, you know, not all ofthem, but so many of the students
just say, “Oh, we have a group chat.
That's how we're going to communicate.”And I'm like, “Yeah, it's only one
(39:38):
little thing of the many things.” Soyou have to explain the tools you have,
and then, to some extent, teach tothose tools, and you have to make sure
the students know how to match the toolto the task, because, for instance, if
you have conflict in your team, that'snot a group chat resolution, that's
a phone call or something like that.
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It's a different way to deal with that.
So one of the exercises… Rebecca, youasked about the exercises… and one of
the exercises we have is what toolsdo they have, and then how they're
going to use those tools to solvedifferent parts of their team project
when they're going to use each one.
Now, it always helps to havea leader who's organized and
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keeping the team on task.
So if you have somebody with onlineskills and has done this before who's
leading the team, that's also helpful.
In an online team, it’s probablymore important to have someone who's
an official leader, either that theteam agrees on of one person, or even
that the professor might suggest thatthis person should be the leader.
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And the structure of the project is soimportant in both online and face-to-face
classes, but especially in online, becausethey actually just need that structure
for how they're going to be able to do itwithout seeing each other all the time.
One of the things I've done when I'vehad group projects online is to have
a discussion forum where studentswere given some choices in terms of
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what types of projects they could do,and I just had them state what they
most preferred to work on, and alsowhat their time availability was so
they could match themselves that way.
There wasn't as much of an issue withan online class of students knowing each
other, because many of them had nevermet before in other classes, but at least
they could try to find some ways in whichthey could agree on topics, but also do
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it in a way where they would be availableat the same times, because some of the
students were working every day, some ofthe students were working nights, some
of the students had a couple of jobs.
Some of the students were taking care ofill relatives, and their time flexibility
was limited, but there was always someoneelse in the class that had similar time
constraints, and it worked pretty well.
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I will say that I recently had anexperience, and to be very personal,
I have a daughter who just graduatedcollege, and she had a professor
who said, “you have to meet one ofthese three times,” and she was a D1
athlete and worked outside of schooland had a busy life, and none of
those times worked with her schedule.
So John, I really like that,because the idea is, let the
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students set their own times.
Don't pick them for them, becauseour life is very different.
They may want to meet at 11o'clock on a Sunday night.
I will be snoring in therecliner by then, I guarantee it.
Well, and we also have to considerthat in online environments, we
might not be in the same time zone.
Exactly.
Our friend Mike Palanski, who's atRochester Institute of Technology,
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I still remember this so well.
He did one of our video interviewsthat we posted, and he talked about
the importance of calendar courtesywhen you're working in online teams.
That was his term.
So Mike says you have to have thatcalendar courtesy to recognize that
it doesn't always have to be at mytime on my 9 to 5 schedule when you're
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working in an international team.
And I will say this is a side note,another personal thing, but once I didn't
get to my book club until nine o'clock.
I told them, I have ameeting at eight o'clock.
And they all laughed at me, and they said,“Is he meeting with somebody from India?”
And when I got to book club a littleafter nine, they said, “Oh, you're meeting
with somebody from India.” I said, “I am.
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I'm meeting with one of my editors onone of my books, who could meet at 8pm
and that's what worked for both of us.
It was in the morning for her.”Now, yes, you do have to have
that calendar courtesy, sothanks to Mike Palanski for that.
Do you have any advice for facultygetting started with team projects?
Yes, we do.
So if a faculty member has never doneany group work or team projects, we
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recommend they start small by doing somegroup work in the classroom, and that
can be as simple as taking content forclass that day and having discussion
questions, or having them do a processcalled learning through discussion, which
is more structured, where students do thereading for the class and then come in
and the professor can rotate around andsee if the teams are really understanding
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what it is that they're talking about.
And then when you're ready to moveon to a team project, we would
recommend that you start small.
So don't start with something semesterlong, maybe a project that could just
take two or three weeks, and start smallin terms of the content and also how
much you're demanding of the studentsand how much you're able to follow
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along with what they're working on.
So we have an article about that inInside Higher Ed that was published
just a couple of months ago abouthow to start doing a team project.
And we can link to that in the show notes.
So we always wrap upby asking, what's next?
Well, we continue our collaboration,as you've heard already, we've been
(44:47):
writing articles, we put out videos onLinkedIn, and our Making Team Projects
Work Facebook page at least every week,and sometimes more, and we are going
to continue to figure out what's nextfor our collaboration, with Lauren in
Arizona and me in upstate New York, it'sactually continued to work really well.
We've got some other things,Lauren, you want to add to that?
(45:08):
Yeah, we have been doing someseminars and workshops for people.
We've been doing a lotof series for LinkedIn.
And this semester, we've been doing justshort videos giving quick tips and then
linking to some of the other items thatwe have on our website and in the book.
So we've got lots of content out there,and we've been to a few conferences.
(45:32):
One of the conferences that we talkedabout the idea of moving from doing
a lecture to working on teams was atthe Team-Based Learning Collaborative,
because if you don't have a requirementthat people use team-based learning,
sometimes it's really hard to get yourcolleagues interested in doing that.
So we have worked on that sortof thing, moving from lecture to
(45:55):
using teams and giving people thosetools that they can take with them.
Well, thank you.
It's been great talking to you again,and one of the suggestions I'd make
for those people getting startedis picking up a copy of your book.
Thank you.
We'd be very happy.
Thank you so much for having us,and we really appreciate the time.
And again, all the student resources areavailable for anybody who has the book.
(46:18):
We're happy to share those so youcan download them and use them.
And it's great to have your bookto provide that structured learning
opportunity for how to make teams.
Oh, thank you.
That's great to hear.
If you've enjoyed this podcast, pleasesubscribe and leave a review on Apple
Podcasts or your favorite podcast service.
(46:41):
To continue the conversation, join uson our Tea for Teaching Facebook page.
You can find show notes, transcripts andother materials on teaforteaching.com.
Music by Michael Gary Brewer.
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