Effective Teamwork in Student Groups
The goals of this section are to explore strategies and behavior of high-performing student project groups, and provide you advice on how to make your group project a successful and fun learning experience.
For a brief overview of this section, click here for the introduction to the Group Project Survival Guide, select Key Topics (2), and then hover over the leftmost icon. Click the icon to get a brief introduction to Effective Teamwork in Project Groups, and a portal to the eight “secrets” of high-performing project teams.
Alternatively, here are descriptions and links to each of the eight presentations (time duration in parentheses):
- Clarify Expectations at the Beginning of a Project (4:33) – describes five key questions you should ask each other before starting a group project.
- Get to Know Each Other Before Starting Work (1:35) – describes ways to jumpstart and build positive relationships between team members.
- Define Task and Process Roles (3:47) – describes ways to define roles and responsibilities that result in high-performing teams.
- Stay Connected Throughout the Project (3:08) – describes the various social network patterns that typically emerge in group projects, and how to avoid interaction problems.
- Deal with Conflict Early (4:30) – describes the various stages of team development (Tuckman) and the importance of anticipating and managing emerging conflict.
- Schedule an Appropriate Number of Productive Meetings (3:05) – describes five tips how to plan and conduct effective and efficient project meetings.
- Put it All Together with a Clear Plan (2:12) – most project teams tend to split up the work and then combine individual effort later—this presentation gives advice on how to make this divide-and-integrate strategy work.
- Avoid Doing Things at the Last Minute (2:44) – describes ways to avoid pulling all-nighters just before the project is due.
In each presentation (created in Macromedia Breeze), you can use the “Outline” tab to navigate to a specific part of the presentation, or the “Notes” tab to see a text transcript of each slide. At the end of each presentation there is a brief quiz to test your understanding.