Los condicionamientos del marco geográfico

Research carried out previously by the author, investigated co-located student project teams at five different institutions (Whatley et al. 1999). Using team interviews during their projects, and questionnaires at the end of the projects, students were asked for their opinions on their team working and outcomes from the projects. The results were analysed to determine what similarities and differences appeared at different higher educational institutions, and so whether there were common issues in team project work, which confirmed some of the findings reported in the literature. The interview data gave information on the general levels of satisfaction as the students were undertaking the projects, and highlighted particular problems the students recognised during the project. Topics covered included attendance and chairing of meetings, use of email for communication, allocating tasks, planning the project, problems and their perceived satisfaction and learning from the project. The questionnaire data gave information on the students’ perceptions of specific problems, positives of team working and acquiring particular skills.

The teams in this survey did spend a considerable amount of time on the project, often meeting daily throughout their project, so were probably using the meetings for regular bouts of conveying and converging as suggested by Murthy and Kerr (2003). The students in the interviews did not suggest that arranging meetings was a problem, but only two of the eight teams said that all team members attended the meetings, and the other teams said that it did hamper progress on the project. Questionnaire findings indicated that not all individuals regarded the meetings as useful, disconfirming work by He et al. (2007), which emphasised the importance of frequent meetings. Non- contribution of team members was regarded as a significant problem, sometimes leading to free-riding by some team members, an effect noted by Piezon and Ferree (2008), and arranging meetings did feature as a problem for most teams, as found by Burdett (2003). Most teams appointed a chairperson and/or a secretary for each meeting, and it was usually the same person throughout the project. As these teams held frequent meetings, and the chairperson was the same throughout the project, it could be taken that this individual took on a leadership role, as suggested by Beranek (2005).

Email was not used very often by the teams to arrange meetings, but used by some teams to send work to each other. This is not surprising, because this part of the study was conducted in the late 1990’s before email became commonplace among the student population, and these teams were working co-located, so had no need to use email to any great extent. Face to face communication was the predominant means of communication, even though various pieces of software were being used to develop the products of their team projects. Students thought that the teams did develop a level of trust and support, and provided a supportive and trusting environment for their learning, recognised as important by Politis (2003) and Dillenbourg (1999). Students also showed some appreciation of the benefit of explaining work to each other, confirming findings of Eijl et al. (2005), and the benefit of peer support shown by Fellers (1996).

Allocation of tasks within these teams was effected equally by individual preference or by team members’ experience of skill areas. In most cases the allocation was adhered to during the project, so individual preference and experience appeared to be acceptable means of allocating the tasks between the team members. This should positively affect the project outcome, according to Drury et al. (2003). Similarly some form of planning was carried out by all of these students, which in most cases resulted in a plan that was stuck to throughout the project. The problems the teams mentioned included lack of time, available software, tutor help, books and even computers, and these may have affected the original planned schedule.

One of the main purposes of working in teams, is to develop team working skills, but the responses showed that students did not feel they developed interpersonal or team skills, such as communication, listening, presentation, leadership and negotiating skills, and did not feel they learned more by working in a team, although some students mentioned gaining knowledge of their strengths and weaknesses. There was an even split between positive and negative responses, in terms of what individuals had got out of the projects, with only a few mentioning “experience of working together” and “teamwork” as positive outcomes of the team project, but more than half of the students mentioned experience of using different software as the main outcome of the project, showing a “task oriented” approach to their projects.

To summarise the findings, not all of the students thought that they had benefited from working in a team, or were satisfied with the outcome of their team project. Many did not think they developed team skills or interpersonal skills. In particular, listening, negotiating, presentation or leadership skills were not always recognised. Learning about individual strengths and weaknesses was lacking, and trust was often not developed within the team. Many students regarded the meetings as very important, but often found it difficult to organise meetings, and get all team members to contribute. Sometimes there was a poor understanding of the tasks involved, some students lacked skills for particular tasks, and help from the tutor was not always satisfactory. In many cases the team project was completed without establishing ground rules at the beginning, and problems that arose were not always addressed, leading to some projects not being completed on time. Five different institutions were surveyed, but the difficulties experienced appear to be similar in all cases. Despite the small sample sizes of the teams who responded to the questionnaires, it is clear that many of the problems suggested by Ann Chadwick (1994) are experienced by students working in co-located teams.

3.5.2. Differences between student and organisational team