Student teams’ development over time: tracing the relationship between the quality of communication and teams’ performance

Abstract

Current discussions in higher education and alumni training acknowledge the challenges training programs face in responding to the authentic needs of the labor market. In addition to academic knowledge, higher education institutions are expected to provide general 21st-century skills, such as problem-solving, critical thinking, collaboration, and interpersonal skills. To meet these challenges, many institutions utilize collaborative pedagogies such as learning in teams. However, teamwork in higher education tends to focus primarily on the task aspects of performance at the expense of the team aspects, and for educators, there may be no feasible way to assess whether the students are learning to work successfully as teams. This paper explores how new student teams (n = 3) that simulate real business teams by taking a challenging entrepreneur assessment, developed over three semesters for general skills (i.e., communication), and whether the improvement in their communication also indicated the teams' improved performance (i.e., financial success). As an analytical tool, the study relies on initial parameters on teams' microdynamics of communication (Losada, 1999) normalized with fuzzy logic. In accordance with the current understanding of team development, the results did not show any linear improvement, but the quality of communication in the teams improved episodically. Further, the results provide evidence of the possible relationship between the improved quality of communication and the teams' collective financial success. However, in future work, due to the lack of sensitivity of the parameters in this context together with the recent criticisms of the mathematical basis of the patterns of team dynamics based on Losada's parameters, they will be reexamined with a Monte Carlo sensitivity analysis.

Meta-analysis of Student Performance Assessment Using Fuzzy Logic

“…This shows the positive impact of FST as one of the most common fuzzy logic methods used to improve fuzzy logic and a reduction ambiguity in predictions due to the subjective assessment. In each of these methods, 21.05% of the eight articles applying this method have reported positive effects on fuzzy logic (Daud et al, 2011;Henriques et al, 2018;Baba et al, 2012;Voskoglou, 2012;Vesely et al, 2016;Jamali and Sayyadi Tooranloo, 2009;Voskoglou, 2013;Pöysä-Tarhonen et al, 2016), and 2.63% of articles considering the effects of fuzzy method because the results obtained do not make significant changes due to a decrease in some student scores (Ozdemir and Tekin, 2016).…”

“…• behavior (Vesely et al, 2016), • e-learning (Herrera-Viedma et al, 2009;Dias and Diniz, 2013;Almohammadi and Hagras, 2013;Deborah et al, 2015;Arguedas et al, 2018), • intelligent tutoring system (Chrysafiadi and Virvou, 2012;Machado et al, 2016), • laboratory application (Gokmen et al, 2010; Yıldız and Baba, 2014), • library service quality (Jamali and Sayyadi Tooranloo, 2009), • presentation skills (Daud et al, 2011; Ozdemir and Tekin, 2016), • problem solving (Voskoglou, 2012;Voskoglou, 2013;Owais, 2009), • student academic performance (Ingoley and Bakal, 2012;Yadav and Singh, 2011;Oyelade et al, 2010;Yadav et al, 2014;Sakthivel et al, 2013;Yildiz et al, 2013;Arora and Saini, 2013;Inyang and Joshua, 2013;Rusli et al, 2008;Do and Chen, 2013;Hidayah et al, 2013;Borkar and Rajeswari, 2013), • student learning assessment (Sripan and Suksawat, 2010), • student performance assessment (Barlybayev et al, 2016;Darwish, 2016;Baba et al, 2012;Bhatt and Bhatt, 2011;Prokhorov and Kulikovskikh, 2015;Patil et al, 2012;Pöysä-Tarhonen et al, 2016), and • students' choice (Henriques, et al, 2018;Kabra and Bichkar, 2011).…”

“…• case studies (Machado et al, 2016), • comparative analysis (Daud et al, 2011;Ingoley and Bakal, 2012;Barlybayev et al, 2016;Gokmen et al, 2010;Yadav and Singh, 2011;Darwish, 2016;Oyelade et al, 2010;Sakthivel et al, 2013;Bhatt and Bhatt, 2011;Rusli et al, 2008;Ozdemir and Tekin, 2016;Owais, 2009;Do and Chen, 2013), • experiment (Arora and Saini, 2013;Prokhorov and Kulikovskikh, 2015;Herrera-Viedma et al, 2009;Dias and Diniz, 2013;Almohammadi and Hagras, 2013;Deborah et al, 2015;Arguedas et al, 2018;Voskoglou, 2013;Borkar and Rajeswari, 2013), • mix methods (Henriques et al, 2018;Baba et al, 2012;Yadav et al, 2014;Yildiz et al, 2013;Sripan and Suksawat, 2010;Voskoglou, 2012;Inyang and Joshua, 2013;Vesely et al, 2016;Chrysafiadi and Virvou, 2012;Patil et al, 2012;Pöysä-Tarhonen et al, 2016;Kabra and Bichkar, 2011), and • questionnaire (Yıldız and Baba, 2014;Jamali and Sayyadi Tooranloo, 2009;Hidayah et al, 2013).…”

Social Media Usage of Students, Role of Tie Strength, and Perceived Task Performance

“…For example, Fransen, Kirschner, and Erkens, (2011) argued that high-quality task-specific communication is important in all stages of team work. Pöysä-Tarhonen, Elen, and Tarhonen (2016) and Vora and Markóczy (2012) demonstrated that improved communication in terms of content, frequency, quality, and responsiveness helps to enhance group learning ability and overall task performance. Similarly, Baldwin, Bedell, and Johnson (1997); Chapelain, Morineau, and Gautier (2015); and Pöysä-Tarhonen et al.…”

“…Pöysä-Tarhonen, Elen, and Tarhonen (2016) and Vora and Markóczy (2012) demonstrated that improved communication in terms of content, frequency, quality, and responsiveness helps to enhance group learning ability and overall task performance. Similarly, Baldwin, Bedell, and Johnson (1997); Chapelain, Morineau, and Gautier (2015); and Pöysä-Tarhonen et al. (2016) proved that groups with high levels of communication are likely to achieve improved group performance.…”