Taking teamwork seriously towards a new concept for student research projects

Teamwork within a Senior Capstone Course: Implementation and Assessment

“…Students tend to have a negative view toward teamwork (Hansen 2006). We try to overcome this resistance by situating teamwork at the heart of the senior capstone design and emphasizing it throughout the semester (Brunsbach, Kattenbach, and Weber 2021; Chapman and van Auken 2001). Time is allocated during class to discuss teamwork, most (including graded) assignments must be completed as a team, individual assignments are connected to the group project, self- and peer evaluations are completed, and workshops are conducted.…”

“…Time is allocated during class to discuss teamwork, most (including graded) assignments must be completed as a team, individual assignments are connected to the group project, self- and peer evaluations are completed, and workshops are conducted. These techniques are part of an overall strategy to improve students’ skills in “team processes, consensus-finding and coordinated team behavior” (Brunsbach, Kattenbach, and Weber 2021, 455), with a specific focus on listening and speaking, time management, problem solving, and collaboration within teams. Because our course design also requires students to reflect on and report team dynamics in the initial and final stages of teamwork collaboration, our expectation is that they will assess and develop their teamwork skills over the course of the semester.…”

“…Second, our data enable us to examine whether and how teamwork might have been affected in three different educational settings: in-person, online, and hybrid instruction (Bayer, Turper, and Woods 2022), where hybrid refers to in-person instruction for approximately the first half of the course and online for the second half. In this way, we contribute to discussions about bringing teamwork into research projects (Brunsbach, Kattenbach, and Weber 2021;Warner 2016).…”