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1. Operationalizing team commitment in a project-based learning environment

   https://doi.org/10.1109/FIE56618.2022.9962577  

   Jaiswal, Aparajita; Karabiyik, Tugba; Thomas, Paul; Magana, Alejandra J. (October 2022, Proceedings of the Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE))

   Commitment is a multi-dimensional construct that has been extensively researched in the context of organizations. Organizational and professional commitment have been positively associated with technical performance, client service, attention to detail, and degree of involvement with one’s job. However, there is a relative dearth of research in terms of team commitment, especially in educational settings. Teamwork is considered a 21stcentury skill and higher education institutions are focusing on helping students to develop teamwork skills by applied projects in the coursework. But studies have demonstrated that creating a team is not enough to help students build teamwork skills. Literature supports the use of team contracts to bolster commitment, among team members. However, the relationship between team contracts and team commitment has not been formally operationalized.This research category study presents a mixed-methods approach towards characterizing and operationalizing team commitment exhibited by students enrolled in a sophomore-level systems analysis and design course by analyzing team contracts and team retrospective reflections. The course covers concepts pertaining to information systems development and includes a semester-long team project where the students work together in four or five member teams to develop the project deliverables. The students have prior software development experiences through an introductory systems development course as well as multiple programming courses. The data for this study was collected through the team contracts signed by students belonging to one of the 23 teams of this course. The study aims to answer the following research question: How can team commitment be characterized in a sophomore-level system analysis and design course among the student teams?A rubric was developed to quantify the team commitment levels of students based on their responses on the team contracts. Students were classified as high or low commitment based on the rubric scores. The emergent themes of high and low commitment teams were also presented. The results indicated that the high commitment teams were focused on setting goals, effective communication, and having mechanisms in place for timely feedback and improvement. On the other hand, low commitment teams did not articulate the goals of the project, they demonstrated a lack of dedication for attending team meetings regularly, working as a team, and had a lack of proper coordination while working together. 

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2. Cooperative Learning and Co-Regulation: Exploring Students' Teamwork Strategies in Higher Education

   https://doi.org/10.1109/FIE58773.2023.10342908  

   Aggrawal, Sakhi; Cristancho, Jorge A; Patel, Devang A; Magana, Alejandra J (October 2023, IEEE)

   This research paper investigates the effectiveness of cooperative learning and co-regulation strategies in promoting teamwork and enhancing students' performance in higher education. The study was conducted in an in-person intermediate-level information system design course with 152 students divided into 31 teams. The students utilized the Scrum framework to manage a semester-long project with three milestones. Retrospective data were collected at the end of each milestone, and the first milestone data were analyzed in this study. Through a thematic analysis of retrospective data collected after the first milestone, the study examines students' planning, monitoring, and reflection strategies. The findings reveal that students demonstrated adaptive planning, equitable contribution, and task allocation based on individual strengths and preferences. In terms of monitoring, students adopted a proactive approach, displayed relational competence, and utilized both synchronous and asynchronous communication channels. Regarding reflection, students valued effective planning and execution but struggled with time management. They developed concrete improvement strategies for the next milestone, emphasizing realistic deadlines, improved communication, and a better understanding of team members' strengths. This research contributes to the understanding of cooperative learning and co-regulation in promoting effective teamwork in higher education. The findings have implications for pedagogical practices and suggest the importance of integrating cooperative learning and co-regulation strategies in team-based learning environments. Future research can further explore the application of these strategies in different educational contexts and investigate their long-term effects on students' performance and engagement. 

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3. Teamwork dynamics in the context of large-size software development courses

   https://doi.org/10.1186/s40594-023-00451-6  

   Magana, Alejandra J; Amuah, Theodora; Aggrawal, Sakhi; Patel, Devang A (December 2023, International Journal of STEM Education)

   Background: Effectively facilitating teamwork experiences, particularly in the context of large-size courses, is difficult to implement. This study seeks to address the challenges of implementing effective teamwork experiences in large courses. This study integrated teamwork pedagogy to facilitate a semester-long project in the context of a large-size class comprising 118 students organized into 26 teams. The data for this study were collected from two online teamwork sessions when teams collaborated and self-recorded during the in-class time. The video recordings were qualitatively analyzed to identify patterns in team dynamics processes through visualizations. The study aims to provide insights into the different ways team members engaged in team dynamics processes during different phases of the semester. Results: Findings suggest that members of teams were mostly active and passive during meetings and less constructive and interactive in their engagement. Team members mainly engaged in communication, team orientation, and feedback behaviors. Over time, team members' interactions with one another remained about the same, with feedback behaviors tending to diminish and coordination behaviors staying about the same or slightly increasing over time. Conclusion: The implications of this study extend to both practice and theory. Practically, combining cooperative learning and scrum practices enabled a blend of collaborative and cooperative work, which suggests providing teams with tools and structures to coordinate teamwork processes and promote interaction among team members. From a theoretical perspective, this study contributes to the understanding of temporal aspects of teamwork dynamics by examining how team interactions evolve during working sessions at different points in time. Overall, this research provides valuable insights for educators, practitioners, and researchers aiming to enhance teamwork experiences in large courses, particularly in software development disciplines. 

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4. Investigating Reflection in Undergraduate Software Development Teams: An Analysis of Online Chat Transcripts

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3545945.3569790  

   Hundhausen, Christopher; Conrad, Phill; Adesope, Olusola; Tariq, Ahsun; Sbai, Samir; Lu, Andrew (March 2023, ACM)

   Metacognition is widely acknowledged as a key soft skill in collaborative software development. The ability to plan, monitor, and reflect on cognitive and team processes is crucial to the efficient and effective functioning of a software team. To explore students' use of reflection--one aspect of metacognition--in undergraduate team software projects, we analyzed the online chat channels of teams participating in agile software development projects in two undergraduate courses that took place exclusively online (n = 23 teams, 117 students, and 4,915 chat messages). Teams' online chats were dominated by discussions of work completed and to be done; just two percent of all chat messages showed evidence of reflection. A follow-up analysis of chat vignettes centered around reflection messages (n = 63) indicates that three-fourths of the those messages were prompted by a course requirement; just 14\% arose organically within the context of teams' ongoing project work. Based on our findings, we identify opportunities for computing educators to increase, through pedagogical and technological interventions, teams' use of reflection in team software projects. 

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5. A Reflection on Action Approach to Teamwork Facilitation

   Jaiswal, A.; Patel, D.; Zhu, Y.; Lee, J.; Magana, A.J. (January 2022, Proceedings ASEE annual conference)

   Working in teams has been recognized as an essential 21st-century skill. Introducing teamwork in the undergraduate classroom is crucial as it allows the students to work with individuals with diverse skillsets and learn from one another. It is important to note that just creating a team and allowing the students to work does not foster teamwork skills. Inculcating teamwork skills requires a consciousness on the part of the instructor and the teaching assistants. Pedagogies such as cooperative learning have been recognized as effective in helping students develop teamwork skills. We introduced a joint reflection on action approach to developing teamwork skills among novice students as part of a sophomore-level systems analysis and design course. In this evidence-based practice paper, we report on students’ reflections regarding their perceptions of teamwork. This study approaches the following research questions: What are students' reflections about the role of communication while working in teams in a cooperative project-based learning environment? The guiding pedagogical framework for this course is cooperative learning. The course requires the students to work in teams in a semester-long software development project. To elicit reflection on action about their teamwork experience. Specifically, we exposed students to concrete experiences as part of their teamwork interactions, which became the basis for observations and reflections. For this, the semester-long project was complemented with one reflection-on-action activity. In the activity, students were asked to watch a video of secrets of successful teamwork and were asked to reflect on their perceptions about the role of communication within teams. The students’ reflections on the activity were analyzed using qualitative inductive thematic analysis to understand the students’ perceptions regarding teamwork and communication within teams. 

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