An innovative use of the web to build graduate team skills

Abstract

Successful graduates in today's competitive business environments must possess sound interpersonal skills and the ability to work effectively in team situations within, and across, disciplines. However, developing these skills within the higher education curriculum is fraught with organisational and pedagogical difficulties, with many teachers not having the skills, time or resources to facilitate productive group processes. Furthermore, many students find their teamwork experiences frustrating, demanding, conflict-ridden and unproductive. This paper brings together the perspectives and experiences of an engineer and a social scientist in a cross-disciplinary examination of the characteristics of effective teamwork skills and processes. A focus is the development and operation of ‘TeamWorker’, an innovative online system that helps students and staff manage their team activities and assessment. TeamWorker was created to enhance team teaching and learning processes and outcomes including team creation, administration, development and evaluation. Importantly, TeamWorker can facilitate the early identification of problematic group dynamics, thereby enabling early intervention.

The authors wish to acknowledge the generous support of a Queensland University of Technology Teaching Fellowship, which enabled the ‘TeamWorker project’ to be successfully developed and implemented by the first author. The Student Capability Profile was the major outcome of a QUT Large Teaching & Learning grant to the university's Faculty of Built Environment and Engineering. Readers wishing to access further information about TeamWorker and its ongoing development are encouraged to contact the first author.