Assessing team effectiveness

Abstract

The continuation of the technology explosion of the second half of the 20th century requires the availability of a diverse and highly capable technical workforce. Current teaching pedagogies rely heavily on students collaborating, either informally or formally, in a team-like environment. Unfortunately, even with the increased emphasis on the use of student teams in academia there has been little-to-no effort to develop quantitative instruments to measure how successful the teaming experience is for participating students. Therefore, the goal of this study was to begin developing a self-assessment instrument, which would have evidence of reliability and validity, to facilitate the identification of effective student teams. For the purpose of the paper, students' perception of functionality/effectiveness has been operationalized in terms of a self-report, 24-item instrument requiring students to indicate the degree to which their team worked together across a range of domains, including: interdependency, learning, potency and goal-setting. Although the instrument was conceptualized as a four factor model, results of this study indicate the current scale represents a single-factor model of team effectiveness. Subscale internal consistency reliability estimates, based on Cronbach's coefficient alpha, were: .96,.92,.96, and. 94 for Interdependency, Learning, Potency, and Goal-Setting, respectively. Cronbach's coefficient alpha for the entire scale was. 98.