Team Projects Toolkit

When students work in teams, they can develop a set of interpersonal skills that will be beneficial in the workplace. And in teams  students can create more complex, authentic projects where they engage in higher level thinking skills. Research has also shown that students working in cooperative teams to solve problems outperform individuals competing with each other.

This guide aims to provide Instructors and students with the guidance and tools they'll need to manage team projects. It can be used in conjunction with any of the media toolkits.

Project Design

• Best Practices for Designing Group Projects

 Building in Success

• How do I Get Student Buy-in?
• Better Group Work Begins with How the Groups are Formed
• Teaching Teamwork - Tools from MIT
• CATME - Smarter Teamwork - series of online tools -(requires user license fee)

 Student Product Options

• Multimedia Toolkits
• Format Options for Group Presentations
• Debate: Structured Academic Controversy

More Resources

Barkley, E.F. (2014). Collaborative learning techniques: A handbook for college faculty. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.  Full text available online.

Team Setup

• Team Roles  
• Team Contract
• Sample Skills Inventory

 Groups in Cougar Courses

• Setting up Groups in a Cougar Course
• Adding a Group Self-select Activity in Cougar Courses

Cougar Courses Collaboration Tools

Once you set up groups in CC, these tools can be set to separate groups,  providing each team with  their own workspace.

• Set Up a Forum - create groups in CC, then set the forum to separate groups to provide each team with a discussion space
• Chat Activity - for  real- time synchronous discussion, chats can be saved for future reference.  
• OU Wiki - collaborative editing, similar to Google docs.
• See the student section below  for more tools.

Assessing Teams

In addition to evaluating the team's product, you'll also want to gather information on the group's overall effectiveness and the individual team member's contributions.

Multiple examples of self,  peer, and group assessment forms on the CMU Eberly Center site.

CATMEs Peer evaluation instruments - word documents

Team Peer evaluation examples from Penn State's Schreyer Institute.

Assessment Tools

Cougar Courses Feedback activity  - The Instructional Design team created a peer feedback activity with sample questions. If you'd like us to import it into your course, where you will be able to modify it to your needs, contact  IDS with your course name and number to request this. 

Cougar Courses Workshop Activity

Teammates:  A free online tool for managing student peer evaluations and feedback.

Working in a Team

The Language of Teamwork - phrases to help you express agreement and disagreement, run a meeting, build relationships and motivate.

If your instructor hasn't provided these, use the docs in Team Setup above to assign roles and set some groundrules.

Tools for Success

Design  
LucidChart - free online tool for real-time collaboration creating  mind maps, flow charts and other graphic organizers. Watch Video Tutorials

Meeting Online 
Zoom webconferencing tool - free for CSUSM students. In the student help guides, Media tools section you'll find guides on installing, using and recording  presentations with zoom

Content/Project Management 
Collaborating in Google Drive

 Trello - Easily allows you to set up teams, tasks, due dates and assign tasks.   Getting started with Trello.

Office 365 free download.   Includes the app  Planner - similar to Trello.