Fully Online Team Projects to Engage Learners and Prepare for Remote Aspects of Employment: A case study from a 100-level General Education science course
Concurrent Session 8
Brief Abstract
Employers are looking for candidates that can work on remote teams. How can online coursework prepare students to meet these needs? Come explore how to design a fully online team project that scaffolds success for students and promotes critical soft skills such as cooperation, collaboration, and use of asynchronous tools.
Extended Abstract
Read through job descriptions in a wide variety of fields and you will find employers looking for candidates that can work independently as well as in teams. Fully remote online learning has an abundance of opportunities for independent work and activities the develop skills such as self-starting and independent completion of tasks. Opportunities for teamwork are less common and can pose some challenges. In the past few years tools for remote collaboration have become more common, making the creation of online team projects easier for the instructional designer, instructor and student.
Before adding a team project to a course, we must understand how this project will help meet course, program, and institutional outcomes. What academic topics will be addressed? What soft skills can be practiced?
The case study presented here is an eight-week 100-level science course that is both a General Education offering as well as the first course in STEM programs. This means STEM and non-STEM majors will be on the same teams enhancing a diversity of perspectives. Our goal for the project is to allow students to explore the role of STEM fields in current events and topics. We also want to foster cooperation and community among online virtual students, while teaching valuable asynchronous collaboration skills.
Team projects, be they virtual or face-to-face, have inherent challenges. High on this list is the concern that all students are not contributing to the same degree, putting most of the work on one or two of the team members. To address this concern, and deal with situations where students may drop the class, the team project is modular yet cohesive. The team selects a real-world topic such as solar power or the conflict in Ukraine. Each member of the team will research the selected topic from the lens of a STEM field such as Environmental Science, Space Studies or Computer Science. In this way, if any team member fails to contribute to the final presentation, the other students are not responsible for doing that work, and an engaging presentation is still achieved.
Another challenge with teamwork is ensuring that teams are successfully meeting (synchronously or asynchronously) regularly to produce the final presentation. We use a scaffold approach to building the team project that embeds check points for instructors to observe active advancement to the goal of a live final presentation. Discussions are used in a variety of ways to observe and measure successful progress and ensure that all team members are actively contributing.
In week two of the course students are placed in a discussion area with only their team members and asked to arrange their first team meeting and establish an asynchronous communication method such as Slack, MS Teams, Discord etc. Students are provided video resources on how to select a communication method, and general assistance with remote teamwork skills. This activity is graded based on the timing and level of each students interactions to achieve the stated outcomes.
On the Week six discussion each student creates a document detailing their research and the resources that will be used to produce their section of the final project. This provides an opportunity for classmates and the instructor to give feedback and suggestions, while ensuring that each student is actively participating in the project.
Since this course does not include a weekly synchronous class, final team presentation times are coordinated with the instructor. Presentations are held in a Zoom room and recorded for viewers that cannot attend live. In week seven each team prepares a flyer with the date and time of their presentation, the Zoom link, and an engaging description of their topic. Each student is required to attend or view the recording for every team. On the week eight discussion students reply to each team giving feedback or asking questions related to the presentation. They must also reply to at least two students that replied on their presentation thread. This provides the equivalent of live class presentations, while allowing the flexibility required in online learning.
Facilitation of a course containing a fully online team project is often unfamiliar to online instructors, and can require a different balance of instructional workload. The course being discussed here contains assignments other than the team project, but provides clickable grading rubrics to make the grading of assignments a more streamlined process. This increases time for discussion facilitation, team oversight, and the final live presentations. Faculty credentialed to teach this course are also provided a brief training on how to most effectively and efficiently teach the course.
Do you feel an online team project would add to your course or program? Stop by and bring your questions and concerns so we can brainstorm how to make a fully online team project a part of your students’ success and prepare your graduates for the interview question – Describe a time when you worked on a remote team.
Attendees to this discovery session will receive detailed information on the methodology, intent and practical steps to incorporating a team project in a fully online course. Challenges and concerns can be addressed relating to diverse content areas and implementations. Lasting connections will be made to build a community of educators interested in promoting the use of team projects in online learning.
Related Resources
Scherling, S. E. (2011). Designing and Fostering Effective Online Group Projects. Adult Learning (Washington, D.C.), 22(2), 13–18. https://doi.org/10.1177/104515951102200202
Morgan, K., Cameron, B. A., & Williams, K. C. (2009). Student perceptions of social task development in online group project work. Quarterly Review of Distance Education, 10(3), 285–.
Ekblaw, R. (2016). Effective Use Of Group Projects In Online Learning. Contemporary Issues in Education Research (Littleton, Colo.), 9(3), 121–128. https://doi.org/10.19030/cier.v9i3.9707