Helping students reflect on their interpersonal skills: The Team Performance Scale (TPS)

Abstract

Many instructors of program evaluation incorporate team-based service projects into their courses. What is often overlooked is that it provides a golden opportunity for students to reflect on the interpersonal skills necessary for teamwork. This paper explains how we leveraged service project working groups to include reflection on interpersonal skills. Minor changes were made to the Team Performance Scale (TPS), a tool used for team-based learning in medical education. We found it to be a practical and effective way to engage students in reflecting on behaviours associated with a high functioning team. This practice note will be of interest to instructors using team learning approaches to teach key competencies in program evaluation.