Ground Rules in Team Projects: Findings from a Prototype System to Support Students

Student team project work in higher education is one of the best ways to develop team workingskills at the same time as learning about the subject matter. As today’s students require the freedomto learn at times and places that better match their lifestyles, there is a need for any supportfor team project work to be also available online. Team working requires that the task roles aswell as the maintenance roles are taken into consideration, in that social interactions are just asimportant as carrying out the tasks of the project.The literature indicates that groupware, whilst effective in supporting the task roles, provides limitedsupport for the maintenance roles of team working in the work place. As groupware was notspecifically designed for student team working, it provides limited support for maintenance rolesin student team projects. Virtual learning environments similarly provide support for completingthe task roles. Many researchers have found that students experience difficulties with their teamproject work that reduce the perceived benefits of working in a team. It is proposed that helpingstudents to agree on ground rules at the start of a project will improve team cohesion.This paper describes the implementation and evaluation of a prototype system to help students toagree on ground rules as they start their team projects. The system was tested with teams of studentscarrying out information systems team projects, using an interpretive case study researchapproach. In this case the teams had the additional problem of being composed of students fromacross three years of their undergraduate degree programmes, so they did not always have priorknowledge of each other’s preferences. We were trying to establish how useful this software toolwould be to these student teams, in starting their project work.The findings showed that some of the student teams did find the ground rules function useful, butthe team leaders were the ones who most appreciated its potential. The students may use the outputsin very different ways, but even just looking at the ground rules appeared to get team membersthinking about their expectations for team working. Student teams do not often start bythinking about norms, but this study shows a positive benefit of encouraging teams to agree onground rules at the start of their projects