A Reflection on Action Approach to Teamwork Facilitation
Aparajita Jaiswal, Devang A. Patel, Zhu Yi, Jin Su Lee, Alejandra J. Magana · 2024
Working in teams has been recognized as an essential 21st-century skill.Introducing teamwork in the undergraduate classroom is crucial as it allows the students to work with individuals with diverse skillsets and learn from one another.It is important to note that just creating a team and allowing the students to work does not foster teamwork skills.Inculcating teamwork skills requires a consciousness on the part of the instructor and the teaching assistants.Pedagogies such as cooperative learning have been recognized as effective in helping students develop teamwork skills.We introduced a joint reflection on action approach to developing teamwork skills among novice students as part of a sophomore-level systems analysis and design course.In this evidencebased practice paper, we report on students' reflections regarding their perceptions of teamwork.This study approaches the following research questions: What are students' reflections about the role of communication while working in teams in a cooperative project-based learning environment?The guiding pedagogical framework for this course is cooperative learning.The course requires the students to work in teams in a semester-long software development project.To elicit reflection on action about their teamwork experience.Specifically, we exposed students to concrete experiences as part of their teamwork interactions, which became the basis for observations and reflections.For this, the semester-long project was complemented with one reflection-on-action activity.In the activity, students were asked to watch a video of secrets of successful teamwork and were asked to reflect on their perceptions about the role of communication within teams.The students' reflections on the activity were analyzed using qualitative inductive thematic analysis to understand the students' perceptions regarding teamwork and communication within teams.