Innovative Approaches to Teaching and Assessing Teamwork in Higher Education: Setting Priorities, Using Evidence-Informed Practices, and Avoiding Pitfalls

This guide will help instructors better understand the skills that underlie effective teamwork, offer strategies for structuring group projects, and provide advice on imparting the knowledge and support that students need to develop highly functional, advanced teamwork skills. Even instructors with a great deal of experience in structuring collaborative learning projects may recognize the gap that exists between their current efforts in providing students with teamwork experiences and effectively training students’ teamwork skills. By drawing on literature from the fields of organizational teamwork and teamwork pedagogy in higher education, the authors identify the processes associated with effective teamwork, relate these processes to teamwork in student teams, and distill and organize strategies for developing students’ teamwork knowledge, skills, and attitudes. Featuring evidence-informed tools, case studies, and best practices, this highly practical text provides everything higher education instructors need to target and advance their students’ teamwork competencies while maximizing the learning benefits of peer collaboration.

Table of Contents:
PART I: What is Teamwork, Why Does Teaching it Matter? 1: Why Develop Students’ Teamwork Skills? 2: What is Teamwork in the College Classroom and When to Use It 3: The Challenges of Group Work and Teaching Teamwork Skills PART II: Strategies and Approaches for Teaching Teamwork 4: Designing Successful Teamwork Interventions 5: Establishing Viable Teams 6: Optimizing Student Teamwork 7: Addressing Other Relevant Issues in Student Teams 8: Virtual Teams PART III: Assessing Teamwork Outcomes: Understanding When Our Efforts Are Successful 9: Considerations in Assessing Teamwork 10: Approaches to Assessing Teamwork Competency 11: Tools for Assessing Teamwork Skills PART IV: Epilogue 12: What’s Next For Teamwork

About the Author :
Cynthia G. Campbell is Associate Professor of Psychological Science at Boise State University, USA. Iryna Babik is Assistant Professor of Psychological Science at Boise State University, USA. R. Eric Landrum is Professor of Psychological Science at Boise State University, USA.