Teamwork

Teamwork is a crucial skill for career success because it enables individuals to work effectively with others toward shared goals, while respecting different perspectives and dividing responsibilities. Strong teamwork leads to better decision-making, more innovative solutions, and improved performance across industries. Employers value team players who contribute effort, communicate clearly, and support their colleagues, as these behaviors help build trust and drive results. In today’s collaborative work environments, being able to work well in a team is often what sets successful professionals apart.

Course-Based Approaches

Here are some ways to encourage teamwork skills in your course:

Use problem-based learning, a student-centered teaching approach, to help students develop teamwork skills through group work focused on solving complex, real world problems.
Create collaborative note-taking activities to generate a set of notes for the entire class that includes input from all students.
Ask students to develop group contracts for collaborative projects to help them learn responsibilities, set expectations, learn team roles, and create a system of accountability.
Design activities and projects that promote positive interdependence, individual accountability, and equal participation while fostering teamwork. To facilitate project completion, the instructor guides students and responds to questions rather than lecturing and directing their work.

Programmatic Approaches

Go further by encouraging teamwork at the program or department level with these ideas:

Experiential Learning Center

Offer students opportunities for working with a team on experiential learning that supports development of collaborative skills such as the NIU College of Business Experiential Learning Center.

Student Showcase

Host a showcase of student projects to celebrate accomplishments and encourage integration of team skills in the curriculum. The NIU College of Engineering and Engineering Technology senior design project event is held each spring.

Edible Campus

Explore ways to partner with the NIU Edible Campus project to build teamwork experiences into the curriculum.

Resources

Scaffolding STEM Classrooms to Integrate Key Workplace Skills: Development of Resources for Active Learning Environments — This article from the Journal of College Science Teaching includes how an instructor used feedback from students and TA's, to create resources and facilitation approaches that promote the development of workplace skills including teamwork in an organic chemistry course.
Institute for Transforming University Education, Problem-based Learning Clearinghouse — This resource from the University of Delaware is an open access, Creative Commons licensed repository of PBL activities promoting the creation, sharing, and distribution of innovative and effective PBL materials.
Teamwork — This list of career readiness skills from NACE includes examples of effective teamwork skills.
Teaching Beyond the Topic: Teaching Teamwork Skills in Higher Education — This article in the Journal of Higher Education Theory and Practice explains a method for teamwork skills using basic learning theories like mnemonics, experiential learning, primacy/recency, and repetition.
The Teamwork VALUE Rubric — This page from the American Association of Colleges and Universities includes a rubric to help evaluate whether assessments are meeting student learning outcome standards for teamwork.