Summary

In order to improve student inclusion in team work, student experience and learning from the outcomes associated with group work, and student access to help and support, team formation methods should be considered. This pedagogy advises the use of personality profiling, and consideration of student’s ‘minority status’ to form well balanced teams.

Theory

The formation of teams for group work can have a significant impact on student success, and on their experience of team working and the learning outcomes associated with the group work. Within the university setting teams are often formed at random (e.g. alphabetically, or by ID number) or self-selected by the students. The former gives no consideration to student needs (e.g. not placing minority students alone in teams of non-minorities), the latter can result in students isolating themselves from support (e.g. teams of all Chinese students who speak Chinese during seminars and thus are not able to receive help from ‘eavesdropping’ teaching staff). A great deal of research has been carried out on the formation of teams within industry, and although a comparatively small amount of research has been done on this in an academic setting, it is clear that by not considering the placement of minorities & non-native English speakers we can have a detrimental effect. The same is likely to be true of certain personality types. As such, personality profiling, and constraints on proportions of minorities/international students within groups, can be used to form higher functioning teams. This gives students a better experience, better enabling all students to be involved and to obtain support.

Measurable Benefits

1. Groups formed based on either Kiersey temperaments or Belbin profiles exhibit a much small spread of marks during peer assessment compared to randomly formed groups. This would imply the whole team is more able to be involved and delegate work equally in this personality based groups. This can be seen in interim research results:
   
2. By having teams with greater diversity, the students are able to draw on a broader range of cultural influences and experiences. This leads to a higher quality of work, but also gives the students to view problems from a wider range of perspectives.
3. By not placing minorities alone in a team they are more likely to be confident in speaking up and more likely to be listened to when they do.

How It Works

1. Prior to the commencement of the module, students complete non-compulsory personality profiling
2. Teams are then formed based on the results of the personality profiling (giving a spread of profiles across each team), and on the gender and home student status of the student. Disabilities are also taken into account.
3. Students who don’t engage with the personality profiling are spread across the teams.
4. Students are encouraged, but not forced, to share the outcomes of their personality profiling in order for the team to identify different strengths and weaknesses of the team as a whole. This also helps them recognise that different tasks or communication styles may be better suited to some group members than others.

Practical Example

The 45 students in a seminar complete Belbin profiles in advance of the seminar. The seminar group is then split, by the module leader, into groups of 6-7 students. Where possible, each group has a representative (either in primary or secondary role) from each of the Belbin team roles. Gender of students is also taken into account, in Engineering females are a minority so are placed in pairs as a minimum within teams. No teams are formed entirely of international students (due to potential issues for teams of non-native English speakers). Students with disabilities are also spread between teams, as it would potentially form a disadvantage to have, for example, a team of all dyslexic students, where the assessment is about written communication. Students remain in these groups throughout the term and submit their work as a group. This gives better group working results than randomly allocated teams.

Individual Perspective

Setting up the personality profiling, and creating the teams from this information is time consuming. However, based on results so far it does seem to have a significant beneficial impact for the students so it is well worth doing.

Additional Resources

Significant amounts of research has been carried out on team formation within industry, in particular the work initially done by Meredith Belbin & carried on by many other researchers. Little of this research however has been focussed on teams of university students. One article specifically regarding engineering students, A Team Formation Framework for Managing Diversity in Multidisciplinary Engineering Projects, (Hossain, S., Hasan, M. and Murtuza, M., 2017. International Journal of Engineering Pedagogy (iJEP), 7(1), p.84.) used Kiersey temperament sorting. The more common Belbin team construction methodology was used for environmental students in Construction of Student Groups Using Belbin: Supporting Group Work in Environmental Management (Martin Haigh, Debby Cotton, Tim Hall. (2015) Pedagogic research in geography higher education. Journal of Geography in Higher Education 39:3, pages 299-312.).

Given the lack of papers on the pedagogically ‘best’ team formation method, it was decided to undertake our own. 3 seminar groups were each sorted using a different methodology; ‘random’ (albeit, avoiding putting 1 female alone in a team, or teams consisting solely of international students), ‘Kiersey’ & ‘Belbin’. Whilst this work is still in progress, interim results would seem to show that formation methodologies did not impact on the average score of a group, however, it did result in a much wider spread of marks at peer assessment. This would imply that though the same quality of work was achieved, it was potentially achieved by a few individuals working harder than others rather than by a true ‘group effort’. This work is on-going and will be reported on when further results have been analysed.

Supporting Example: Dr Helen Toner

Summary

Splitting a seminar or workshop group into smaller breakout working groups that stay together all term and tackle specific sub-sections of the week’s work to then report back/begin discussion in the seminar class

How It Works

• Allocate groups randomly.
• Ensure students are able if they wish to swap contact details.
• Arrange seminar work so that in most weeks the work is split and each group is directed to look first at a particular bit of the work and report back/begin the discussion in class.
• Ensure that all the class is brought into the discussion and/or have opportunities to ask or answer questions so the entire group does engage with all the material in some way not just parts of it.

Individual Perspective

I have found students are quicker to respond if they have some time to discuss in groups first. Allocating the groups randomly and keeping them together all term is an attempt to build community, to get students talking to each other outside class, and to get them in groups that are not just of their friends that they know already. Consistency in ensuring the students sit in the groups, giving them a little time to talk in their groups at the beginning of class, and ensuring each group is clearly asked to contribute on ‘their’ topic each week that one has been assigned is important to keep up the momentum of groups working together.

Supporting Example: Dr Russ Kitson

Summary: Suggest Job Roles for Group Work

In this example of allocating group work, in the Chemistry department we like to suggest different roles to be played by students within a group project (eg. project lead, minute taker, presentation designer etc). The example entails the design of a new molecule and then the presentation of this molecule to a mock board made up of academic tutors. We feel that this pedagogy is highly beneficial for promoting a healthy work ethic and effective task management; however, the roles are optional which means that the responsibilities can be spread evenly or as the students wish. These roles should be designed to recreate a real-life setting which can facilitate the promotion of mature and professional skills while studying at university. As one of the 10 conditions of wellbeing, these sorts of pedagogical practices are vital to help prepare students for life after university in a positive and beneficial manner.

How It Works

• Design the group work and allocate an even number of students to each group.
• Think of the appropriate roles or positions that would be required to serve the purpose of the group exercise.
• Encourage or suggest that students should elect among themselves, the individuals that are best suited to each role.

Practical Example

Students for a collaborative team exercise are given the suggested roles:

• Chair/Project lead
• Secretary/minute taker
• Logistics officer (organiser)
• Communications officer (responsible for ensuring accessible methods of communication)
• Design lead 1 (for part of a group presentation)
• Design lead 2 (for part of a group presentation)

Individual Perspective

This has been running for 2 years so far and the student feedback has been extremely positive. Most groups adopt the suggested roles with very few exceptions so far where they decided to rotate these roles across the team. Very good preparation for a real work-based task where team dynamics, logistics and managing people come into play.