Teamwork Struggles and Forming Teams
The issue of teamwork and collaboration has been a call for attention for quite some time now. Students in university find it particularly difficult to collaborate with one another for the successful completion of various academic projects. This happens especially when these projects are in online classes that are asynchronous and as such students are required to work along with the constraints of different time zones. Forming teams has become a very difficult task amongst students which is a growing problem that needs to be addressed.
In Canada, for instance, this particular issue has been of grave concern as university students struggle to really accommodate their fellows. This can be attributed as one of the biggest reasons students find it hard to work together. An example of this would be a group of students that are scattered in Nova Scotia, Vancouver, and Quebec which would result in an extremely hectic and stressful situation. Getting the work done effectively would mean having all members attending meetings which is a vital component of what makes a good team.
What is the problem?
Despite specialist’s directions of the specific importance of teamwork and collaboration among students. A good number of them still find it particularly hard. Several reasons could be used to explain this problem but the first one would be lack of trust.
Check out 4 reasons why students struggling in formating their team.
Image source: Pexels – Monstera
A Lack of Trust
It is likely that students who find it hard to collaborate with others have trust issues. This means they don’t believe in the academic abilities of their fellows and therefore get skeptical about working with them. This subsequently leads to one of the reasons students in university struggle with collaboration, teamwork, and struggle with effective teamwork.
Forming Teams
Forming teams has become a problem amongst students because of the above and below listed problems associated with teamwork. There always seems to be a problematic team member when forming teams that have seriously dented the reputation of teamwork in graduate programs.
Low Engagement and Lack of Interest
Other than this reason, the issues of low engagement and lack of interest could be the other major cause of the struggle. Some students, especially those in universities are generally disinterested in working on a specific school or academic project because of the lousiness of this group. Students who are geared to get the work done find it harder to collaborate which tends to feel like they are being used by their fellows.
Lack of Transparency
Other reasons that could explain the struggles of teamwork among university students include lack of transparency and withholding information. Additionally, many students perceive teamwork as useless and a needless component of a class.
How do we make teams more efficient and high performance?
Moving forward, the best course of action for universities to uphold the utmost standards in education must address the problems and issues of teamwork because the reality of the situations is that universities exist to prepare students for what comes after; which is a lot of group work regardless of what occupations or career choices these students choose to pursue. These issues can be addressed in several ways which include forming teams catered around the availability of each other, grouping students based on similar personality traits, and avoiding pairing students randomly which could lead to many inconveniences for groups to perform effective teamwork.
Forming Teams Effectively
Forming a good team requires careful selection of group members that ensure diversity and balance of skills and personality. To make the right selection, an instructor or a student must have knowledge of the background, skill, experience, or personality of the other students. Current technologies for group formation are random assignments of groups. After forming a team, students must be prepared for how to work in teams effectively. One of the chief complaints is finding ways to access and communicate with their team is taken for granted, that students can message each other on platforms such as Facebook, Whatsapp, and Instagram. The reality is that not all students have social media accounts or personal devices that allow for efficient communication. The means to contact one another are limited on LMS such as D2L unless the instructor provides the infrastructure.
Not all students have social media accounts or personal devices that allow for efficient communication.
Image source: Pexels – Tracy Le Blanc
A Solution to Forming Teams
Overall, while we promote group work in classrooms, we do not provide our students’ infrastructure to succeed in these tasks. In response to these problems, Pandos Intelligence Inc has developed an online platform that allows users to form better groups. The different criteria instructors can choose are skills, availability, personality, and gender. Our platform fills the student team formation gap between online course delivery platforms and in-person networking to support remote learning. Furthermore, Pandos can assign groups taking into account chosen parameters and using AI algorithms to align availability. Furthermore, Pandos is also able to match or diversify skills, personalities (based on the Big Five Traits), and gender. In addition, you can book a demo or a consultation with one of our own at Pandos.
