Tools for creating and managing student teams

Abstract

Collaborative projects are a means of instruction in engineering, both to gain content specific knowledge within an engineering discipline and to master skills associated with working on and leading teams. Yet research indicates that a variety of team-management and team participation difficulties arise when using student teams - difficulties that often result in uneven learning outcomes, unsatisfying collaborative experiences and fitful facilitation headaches for the instructor. This session explores a particularly useful technique - team compacts - as a tool to overcome specific difficulties, to facilitate management of student teams and maximize learning outcomes while minimizing instructional hassle. The session is grounded in published research on the topic, the experience of the facilitators and the practice of the participants.