Teaching and assessing teamwork: Including a method (that works) to determine individual contributions to a team

Implementing teamwork has historically been difficult to achieve in an educational setting and hence has often been avoided. With a heavy emphasis on teamwork via industry and accreditation standards, group projects are a high priority. There are two primary problems to resolve when students work on teams. The first problem is that students are rarely taught how to work on teams. The second problem is the need to assess each individual's contributions (or lack thereof) to the team. Assessing teamwork, by its very nature, is usually deemed as a subjective process. Thus, the approach employed to perform the assessment must be structured in a manner that can be objectively and quantitatively measured via a methodology emphasizing the teaching of teamwork and the evaluation of individual contributions to a team. The individual assessments are accomplished predominantly by a highly structured, systematic method of peer evaluation that emphasizes ethical behavior by members of the team. In the past, peer evaluation has been avoided due to the inherent problems of students grading other students. However, the solution provided in this paper is fair and has been proven very successful Peer evaluation is especially useful and informative because the actual team members themselves know best the contributions of each individual member of the team. This paper presents a brief review of suggestions for topics to improve the teaching of teamwork. The primary emphasis of the paper is to present a successful method of assessing individual contributions to a team. The basis for implementing the teamwork and associated assessment techniques is an industrial model based on a blend of techniques used by Ford Motor Company, Intel Corporation, IBM Corporation, and The Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company.