Teaching teamwork skills in Australian higher education business disciplines

Australian employers continue to indicate that the development of teamwork skills in graduates is as important as mastering technical skills required for a particular career. In Australia, the reporting on the teaching of teamwork skills has emanated across a range of disciplines including health and engineering, with less of a focus on business related disciplines. Although Australian university business schools appear to value the importance and relevance of developing teamwork skills, implementation of the teaching, learning and assessment of teamwork skills remains somewhat of a pedagogical conundrum. The aim of this paper is to present a systematic literature review so as to better understand the salient issues associated with teaching teamwork skills in Australian higher education business disciplines

Teaching Teamwork to Law Students

Despite law firms’ demand for first year associates who can work collaboratively, teamwork is infrequently taught in legal education. Law professors unfamiliar with teamwork theory and practice are unlikely to use teams to engage students in their learning. As a result, law schools continue to graduate students who are unfamiliar and uncomfortable with the concept of working in teams, particularly interdisciplinary teams. This article focuses on the teamwork teaching methods we use in the interdisciplinary courses we teach at California Western. We first provide a rationale for teaching teamwork and a brief description of what professional graduate schools are currently doing to incorporate teamwork instruction. We explain how we use teams within our courses, and how we teach our students teamwork. We then discuss the methodology and findings of our surveys to assess whether students believed they were improving in their knowledge, skills, and attitudes regarding teamwork, and, if so, which components of the courses they believed were most effective in accomplishing this improvement. Finally, we analyze what we have learned from our survey results and how the results, along with our experience, have changed our views and practices of teaching teamwork to law students

Teaching Teamwork in Information Systems Courses

Teams are becoming an increasingly important organizational form. The popularity of teams extends to the information systems development field. IS educators should recognize this trend towards teamwork and prepare their students to work effectively in team environments. This paper discusses the knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSA’s) needed for effective team membership and presents a method for teaching these in the context of IS courses. The paper also discusses the results of a field experiment designed to assess the effectiveness of the method. The results indicate that specific instruction in teamwork does impact students’ perceptions of the success of their teams but does not impact their attitudes towards teamwork

Teaching teamwork to transnational students in engineering and technology

China is producing over 4 million STEM graduates each year. According to the literature, many of these graduates lack the professional skills that are required by the global job market. Consequently, a new course was designed to help Chinese students cultivate the necessary professional knowledge and practical skills in the field of electronic engineering. The aim of this innovative course was to build experience of working in a team to design and develop a rover that can perform specific tasks. The course’s team project covers areas such as electronic design, sensing, instrumentation, measurement, computing, communications, as well as project management, report writing and technical presentation. The learning outcomes and course details are described herein. Furthermore, feedback from 152 Chinese students y is discussed and. Statistical analysis from surveys completed by 152 students are discussed and compared with a similar learning activity that was implemented in the UK. Contrary to popular misconceptions, the survey’s results clearly show that this team based active learning activity was ideally suited to the culture and background of Chinese students.

TEACHING TEAMWORK: AN EXPLORATION OF USING COOPERATIVE LEARNING TEAMS

The business world continues to change at a tremendous rate. We in the Information Systems field contribute to this rate of change and at the same time try to keep up with iL While the content in our field changes constantly, tile way in which we attempt to educate our students (pedagogy) has not changed for some time. One means to change the way we teach our students is through the use of alternative pedagogical models, such as the cooperative learning model. Cooperative learning is defined as the instructional use of small groups so that students work together to maximize their own and each other\u27s learning (Johnson, Johnson and Smith 199lb, p. 3). This paper presents an overview of the cooperative learning modeI, two examples of the model in use, and an exploratory assessment of the model. Additionally, limitations of this study, recommendations for future research and for practice have been provided

New Frontiers 2017-2018

New Frontiers 2017-2018 Features: Educating Educators - Dick Meyer Career in Chemistry - Christopher Exstrom 18th Century Appeal - Denys Van Renen Printmaking Perfection - Victoria Goro-Rapoport Technology, Teaching, Teamwork - Angela Hollman Framing the Future of Fuel - Frank Tenkorang Strength Training, Nutrition, Exercise Science - Greg Brown Motivated by Mint - Bryan Drewhttps://openspaces.unk.edu/new-frontiers/1009/thumbnail.jp

Overcoming the barriers to teaching teamwork to undergraduates in STEM.

There is widespread recognition that undergraduate students in the life sciences must learn how to work in teams. However, instructors who wish to incorporate teamwork into their classrooms rarely have formal training in how to teach teamwork. This is further complicated by the application of synonymous and often ambiguous terminology regarding teamwork that is found in literature spread among many different disciplines. There are significant barriers for instructors wishing to identify and implement best practices. We synthesize key concepts in teamwork by considering the knowledge, skills, and attitudes (KSAs) necessary for success, the pedagogies and curricula for teaching those KSAs, and the instruments available for evaluating and assessing success. There are only a limited number of studies on teamwork in higher education that present an intervention with a control group and a formal evaluation or assessment. Moreover, these studies are almost exclusively outside STEM disciplines, raising questions about their extensibility. We conclude by considering how to build an evidence base for instruction that will empower students with the KSAs necessary for participating in a lifetime of equitable and inclusive teamwork

Teaching beyond the Topic Teaching Teamwork Skills in Higher Education

Employers value teamwork because effective teamwork can create a sustainable competitive advantage in the marketplace. Organizations have reported that the #1 competency they desire in a candidate is the ability to work well in teams. According to survey data, HE students lack the necessary teamwork skills when they enter the workplace. Since HE students should be prepared to bring excellent teamwork skills into the market place, institutions of HE seek to teach the teamwork competency. Accreditation bodies from many disciplines support the need to teach teamwork in HE. In this paper, I demonstrate a method to teach teamwork skills based on foundational learning theories including mnemonics, experiential learning, primacy/recency, and repetition. Student survey results indicate an overwhelming indication that they comprehend the stages of teamwork based on my process. Indications suggest they will be much better prepared to succeed in their interviews and careers

Teaching Teamwork in Virtual Reality

Problem Teamwork and communication skills are highly prized graduate attributes (Coll, Zegwaard & Hodges, 2002), however, many students report that they receive little explicit training in these generic skills (Hansen, 2006). Students tend to dislike group assessments and commonly report feeling anxious, stressed and angry about group work (Neu, 2012). Plan Previous research has suggested that including specific team building activities and explicitly teaching conflict resolution techniques can result in improved attitudes toward teamwork and a better student experience (eg. Ekimova & Kokurin, 2015; Hansen, 2006). For our class, we decided to introduce Virtual Reality (VR) technology to combine the engagement of technology with the real-time feedback from group work in a tutorial. Immersive visual reality has been around since the late ‘80s and the potential for education has been noted (Merchant, Goetz, Cifuentes, Keeney-Kennicutt & Davis, 2014), but as of yet little research has been done in tertiary education settings. We introduced a new tutorial with a VR component to explicitly address teamwork and conflict resolution skills in a large first year communication skills unit with 700+ students. Action In the tutorial, students first completed a series of role-playing scenarios where they had to try and find solutions to common group work problems using conflict resolution techniques. They then worked in small teams to play a problem solving game. Due to limitations on available VR equipment, most (n=26) groups were provided with a origami puzzle that they needed to work together to solve. The other tutorials (n=10) were given a VR game created specifically for the class. In this game, one student wore a Google Cardboard headset and looked for puzzle pieces in a maze. They were given directions from their teammates, who held the map of the maze and the key for the puzzles. Students engaged well with the tutorial in both groups. However, tutors reported that students in the VR activity often had to work in slightly larger groups as there were not always enough students in the class with Android phones to make full use of the activity. Reflection Overall, although perceptions of the VR were generally positive, it did not appear to be more engaging for students than the simpler origami game. Although Google Cardboard provides a cheap and readily available platform for VR, it still involves a great deal of expertise and expense to set up, especially to create a program that works across multiple phone platforms. Unit coordinators may well consider whether it is worth the effort. However, our activity was only looking at generic skills. The full benefits of VR may only be seen for activities focusing on more specific skills, such as virtual field trips, laboratory preparation or surgical training (eg. Palter & Grantcharov, 2014). References Coll, R. K., Zegwaard, K., & Hodges, D. (2002). Science and technology stakeholders’ ranking of graduate competencies Part 1: Employer perspective. Asia-Pacific Journal of cooperative education, 3(2), 19-28. Ekimova, V., & Kokurin, A. (2015). Students’ Attitudes Towards Different Team Building Methods. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 186, 847-855. Hansen, R.S. (2006) Benefits and problems with student teams: Suggestions for improving student teams. Journal of Education for Business. September/October pp 11-19. Merchant, Z., Goetz, E. T., Cifuentes, L., Keeney-Kennicutt, W., & Davis, T. J. (2014). Effectiveness of virtual reality-based instruction on students' learning outcomes in K-12 and higher education: A meta-analysis. Computers & Education, 70, 29-40. Neu, W. A. (2012). Unintended Cognitive, Affective, and Behavioral Consequences of Group Assignments. Journal of Marketing Education, 34(1), 67-81. Palter, V. N., & Grantcharov, T. P. (2014). Individualized deliberate practice on a virtual reality simulator improves technical performance of surgical novices in the operating room: a randomized controlled trial. Annals of surgery, 259(3), 443-448. Psotka, J. (1995). Immersive training systems: Virtual reality and education and training. Instructional science, 23(5-6), 405-431