USING TEAM PROJECTS IN LEARNING

In the context of this research a team project is a learning activity where a small group of between three and fifteen students are engaged in problem solving activity, in a real world scenario. The project may last for anything between two and twenty or more weeks, depending upon the scale of the tasks involved. Team projects and problem based learning, particularly in the computing and information systems disciplines, are a good way to promote constructivist learning and team working in an experiential learning environment (Griffiths and Partington 1992). Students benefit by learning about team working at the same time as learning about the subject matter. The team or group project is a useful tool for teaching, as it taps into the requirements of learning through experimentation and learning by doing. It is particularly useful where classroom instruction needs to be supported by practical work, such as in teaching programming (Poindexter 2003).

The design of a team project as a learning activity gives the learners an opportunity to interact with the learning material in a way that embeds it into a typical working scenario, which Quinn called “engaging learning” (Quinn 1997). Making a learning experience engaging involves interactivity and embeddedness, qualities noted in different learning preferences, so the range of experiences afforded by a team project makes learning accessible to different types of learners, and provides the practice and reflection elements of an experiential learning cycle, to complete the process. Reflection on the learning and the processes of team working form a part of the PDP reflection, valuable for applying for employment upon graduation.

Small team activities serve a number of purposes, such as encouraging dependent and competitive students to develop a more independent or collaborative style and a move towards more interactive, cooperative learning through dialogue (Pask 1976; Tiberius 1990). Approaches to constructivist learning, take the form of negotiating knowledge, linking it to reality of the current setting, and is very often achieved by collaborating with others in carrying out simulated real world projects in a small team (Hmelo- Silver 2003). Individuals develop skills and learning not simply by being told facts, but also through experience of practice. Working in a team gives learners an opportunity to discuss their understanding of the subject with their peers, as they apply the theory to practice (Sharan 1990). Working in teams may benefit individuals as they learn from each other, pool their resources, make decisions, share ideas or create an artefact in a mutually supportive environment (Jaques 1984:80).

Various internal factors affect learners, such as the learner’s current capabilities, personal disposition and information processing preference, together with various external factors, such as the mode of instruction and support for learning, impact upon the effectiveness of instruction. Factors of the learning environment, such as the task, authenticity, recognition, grouping, evaluation and time are also significant (Schunk 2000). The effectiveness of learning is measured in terms of the outcomes from the learning, including intellectual skills, verbal information, cognitive strategy, motor skills and attitudes, many of which can not be measured easily.

In the ideal case learners benefit from teamwork by sharing ideas, learning from the experience of others, less isolation, gaining moral support and combining individual competencies. In addition any tendency for differences through gender specific interpretation may be reduced (Montgomerie 2003). But the reality is that students experience difficulties when engaged in teamwork that detract from the anticipated benefits, such as conflict and lack of commitment on the part of other students (Felder and Brent 1994). In a study by McGraw and Tidwell (2001), based on a course designed to help students prepare for team working, results showed that the course did help the students to reflect upon the process part of team working, such as team dynamics, balance of work, leadership, interpersonal skills, conflict resolution and time management, albeit in a normative way, by legitimising certain behaviours. In some cases the benefits are not recognised by students immediately, but become

apparent at a later date in the workplace, also the skills required in a student team project are not the same as those required in organisations, so additional help from tutors would be appropriate, to fill this gap (Hordyk 2007).

Collaborating with peers is an important means of learning, which may range from discussing issues in class to problem based learning in a team (Boud and Feletti 1997). According to Mergendollar (2006), team projects are a form of problem based learning (PBL) in which learners are self-directed, assisted by guidance or coaching from tutors, in their pursuit of a solution to a problem, but Livingstone and Lynch (2000) suggest that team projects need to be structured if they are to provide maximum benefit to students, which is contrary to pure PBL activities. In the context of this thesis the emphasis is on team projects in the computing or information systems disciplines, where a combination of collaborative and co-operative working is involved. These will be described in the next section, followed by considering the rationale of team projects as learning activities from a learning theory perspective.

3.3.1. Co-operative and collaborative learning

Collaborative learning may be defined as “a situation in which two or more people learn or attempt to learn something together “ (Dillenbourg 1999). The number of people involved may range from two to several hundred, learning may be a joint activity or reading material together, and the activity may be face to face or online. Cooperative means “working with others for a common end, purpose or benefit”, and collaborative means “working together in an endeavour, in a joint intellectual effort” (http://dictionary.reference.com). McConnell (2000:15) defines co-operative learning as “…learning involving working together on some task or issue in a way that promotes individual learning through processes of collaboration in groups”. Many academics use the terms collaborative and co-operative interchangeably, when referring to student team working.

Co-operative learning is enabled through tasks that involve students working in teams to accomplish a common goal, under conditions that include the following elements:

• Positive interdependence. Team members are obliged to rely on one another to achieve the goal. If any team members fail to do their part, everyone suffers consequences.

• Individual accountability. All students in a team are held accountable for doing their share of the work and for mastery of all of the material to be learned.

• Face-to-face promotive interaction. Although some of the team work may be parcelled out and done individually, some must be done interactively, with team members providing one another with feedback, challenging one another's conclusions and reasoning, and perhaps most importantly, teaching and encouraging one another.

• Appropriate use of collaborative skills. Students are encouraged and helped to develop and practice trust-building, leadership, decision-making, communication, and conflict management skills.

• Team processing. Team members set team goals, periodically assess what they are doing well as a team, and identify changes they will make to function more effectively in the future (Johnson et al. 1991).

Co-operative learning can be regarded as process driven, but requiring attention to social processes in order to achieve the goal (McConnell 2000). Problem based learning and project based learning may be considered to be forms of constructivist and collaborative learning, allowing several students to work together on a problem, and learn from each other as they co-construct knowledge. They are engaging in collaborative as well as co-operative working, in combination to permit development of synthesis and application skills. They may also be considered co-operative learning, because individuals rely on each other to perform their allocated parts of the project. Typical PBL or team projects will include activities such as design, development, writing reports, and preparing class presentations, as suggested by Felder and Brent (1994) for engineering students. In these activities individual students will between them be exposed to a wider range of issues than would be likely if they worked alone (Boud and Feletti 1997). Thus co-operative working in a team includes collaborative elements, as well as interdependence and group processes, but parts of the work may be accomplished individually, each held accountable for their tasks (Johnson et al. 1991).

Gibbs (1995) suggests that there are “project teams”, who are task oriented towards completing a task, or “learning teams”, who are process oriented towards support and

learning. In the context of this research, task-orientation is an essential element of co- operation towards achieving the outputs, whereas process orientation arises when team members engage in reflection through collaborative discussion. So a project, in the workplace or in higher education, may be cooperative and involve a project team, with an element of learning to improve performance in the future, but also collaborative as a learning team or community of learners. The concept of a “learning community” was described by Visser (2001) as a vehicle for the discourse necessary for learning, whereby people communicate with each other to help each other to learn through collaboration. Lave and Wenger (1991) describe a community of practice (CoP) as a loosely bonded collection of like minded individuals, which has a long life, and accepts newcomers as apprentices, who learn from the community through active participation. Learning in this case involves informal learning of the socio-cultural practices of the community, through sharing. McDermott at al. (2001) suggested that developing a community of practice helps cross-functional teams to share and improve performance, as an essential part of the learning process leading to nurturing the “learning organisation”. Online tools enable students to form themselves into online CoP as a means of support and learning from each other, e.g. (McMurray 2003).

Berge (1998) regards a project team as a small learning community, whether in the workplace or in higher education. But within a student team there would be no idea of one student being apprentice to another as in a CoP, but the notion of sharing knowledge as suggested by Manville and Foote (1996), is suitable if we consider that students are professionals to a certain extent:

“..a group of professionals informally bound to one another through exposure to a common class of problems, common pursuit of solutions, and thereby themselves embodying a store of knowledge”.

This definition suggests sharing of knowledge so that all members gain increased knowledge, and again, experience of sharing within knowledge management is a growing area of use for IT in organisations, in developing a “learning organisation”.

3.3.2. Developing transferable skills

Given the complexities of teamwork, an important skill to gain from undergraduate programmes should be the ability to analyse issues that arise in working relationships

within teams, so that graduates can apply this skill acquired when beginning their working life (Yorke and Knight 2003). McDermott et al. (1998) suggest that

“teams must receive training/ development in teamwork skills such as team communications, team goal setting, team problem solving, team decision making and team facilitation.” (McDermott et al. 1998).

A team project provides opportunities for students to develop cognitively, learning about the subject matter, and practising skills in argument, also psycho-metrically, learning practical skills, such as using software tools and programming. Finally the affective domain is manifested through students learning about team working, reflecting on their attitudes and relationship with each other.

There is some debate concerning the extent to which team projects in an educational setting can prepare students for team working in the workplace (Dunne and Rawlins 2000). In the field of health teaching, a study comparing the effectiveness of PBL and team projects, did cast doubt on the extent that PBL can help to develop transferable skills suitable for project working in the workplace (Mennin 2007). Further, it is noted by Hordyk (2007), that there is a need for further understanding of the differences between project team working in the workplace and in the educational setting. Hyland and Johnson (1998) say that any skills learned can only apply to that context, suggesting that there is no such thing as a transferable skill. Although other studies, carried out in higher education, suggest that the results may be transferred to the workplace, e.g. problem solving skills (Murthy and Kerr 2003; Lou 2004; Banks and Millward 2007; Mennin 2007).

In the next section the literature on team working is examined in order to identify features of team working that signify successful outcomes, which are subsumed into theories of team working, used as a basis for evaluation of a system developed to help team working processes.