Abstract

Effective teamwork is important in higher education courses to prepare students for future professional contexts. Learning outcomes resulting from teamwork include motivation, knowledge retention, deep learning, critical thinking, and professional competency development. Teamwork in online courses can help students make connections, build community, reduce feelings of isolation, and encourage course persistence. Effective teams typically work toward a common goal. When teams know what that goal is, they can collaborate and share their skills to achieve it. Instructors can assist in this process by making assignment goals clear through the use of rubrics that outline assignment expectations and by providing feedback to help students achieve their goals. This study examines the use of teamwork and rubrics in three online undergraduate courses in a school of business in an open admission regional public university to determine if rubrics improved the effectiveness of student teams. Findings indicate that in the course sections where rubrics were not used, students perceived greater effectiveness in three of the eight areas examined—understanding roles, dividing the work, and contributing equally, suggesting that rubrics may not have the impact expected. Although one would expect that feedback by means of a rubric would encourage both individual learners and teams to monitor their performance and make needed adjustments in their processes, this did not appear to be the case. Future research needs to explore if and how assignment rubrics, which are typically used to identify goals and expectations and provide formative feedback, impact teamwork skill development.

Presenters

Maureen Snow Andrade
Professor, Organizational Leadership, Utah Valley University, Utah, United States

Jill Jasperson
Associate Professor, Organizational Leadership, Utah Valley University, Utah, United States

Details

Presentation Type

Paper Presentation in a Themed Session

Theme

Considering Digital Pedagogies

KEYWORDS

Teamwork, Rubrics, Online Learning

Digital Media

Videos