One of the hardest parts of assigning teamwork is knowing that some of the groups are likely to experience significant challenges. As an instructor, it can be hard to know how to guide teams in a productive direction, especially when much of the teamwork is happening outside of class. Below is a list of common challenges that can arise during team projects along with suggestions for potential instructor responses. In all cases, a useful starting point for the conversation is the team charter and role assignments that were agreed on early in the project as well as your stated learning objectives for the teamwork portion of the assignment. Keeping the conversations focused on these documents can provide students with more clarity on why specific behaviors are problematic and which corrections may be most useful.
One student dominates the team. Often, when a student is doing all the work on behalf of a team, it is because they’re entirely focused on the quality of the final product and don’t trust the other students to complete work to their personal expectations. In these situations, it can be useful to talk to the student about the goals of the teamwork aspect of the project and to frame the work as an opportunity to develop leadership skills (ie, how do you help others reach their potential to ensure the final product is of excellent quality while representing everyone’s views). It can also be useful to have a check-in with the full team to ensure that they have assigned similarly weighted roles to each individual.
One or more students aren’t contributing fully. These situations are often blamed on laziness from the low-contributing members, but often there’s a deeper issue at play. Sometimes students don’t contribute because they see the other students as being smarter or more competent, so the final product would be better if they don’t contribute. In other cases, there’s a social dynamic that resulted in those students feeling excluded early on, so over time they stop trying to participate in discussions. This is particularly common when most students come from a similar background and quickly bond with one another while one or two students don’t have those shared traits. In these cases, it can be useful to have teams engage in team-building exercises designed to identify the strengths of each individual on the team, who then gets assigned a role that they feel comfortable completing.
One or more students disappear entirely. When this happens, the student may also stop coming to class and turning in individual assignments. These are often signs that the student is under significant distress that extends beyond the specific course, so you should refer the student to the Academic Navigator team or other support resources on campus as appropriate. In these situations, it is recommended that you meet with the other members of the team to ensure they are still in position to successfully complete the project. Depending on the status of the project and work that may have been lost when that student stopped participating, the team may need an extension or additional supports as deemed reasonable by the instructor.
Each student is working individually. One of the most common problems that can arise with teamwork is that each student gets assigned an individual role, then the final product is just all those individual pieces put together. This generally defeats the purpose of making it a team project to begin with since we want all students to understand all aspects of the project. It also often produces low-quality work that lacks cohesion. If you notice this happening often, it can help to be clear in your expectations at the beginning how you expect individuals to collaborate on the final product. It can also be useful to build significant time in class for students to work together since this often happens when students don’t have time to connect outside of class. You’ll still want to ensure that a single student doesn’t take on the role of putting everything together since this often erases the voice of other students.