T402: Learning in Teams: How to create conditions for effective collaboration

Effective teamwork is crucial in the workplace and will be a vital part of your graduate experience. In many university courses, you will collaborate with unfamiliar peers on projects, presentations, and papers. Despite the benefits of collaborative learning in teams, it often proves frustrating and ineffective for many participants. Few groups excel at sharing diverse ideas, resolving differences, making collaborative decisions, or learning from errors. Disagreements can lead to disengagement. Critical feedback may provoke defensiveness. A dominant voice might suppress others’ contributions. Why is this and what can you do to make your and others’ team learning experience more effective?

This module provides a toolkit of research-based strategies for effectively designing, leading, and collaboratively learning in teams. You will explore and apply strategies from both the classroom, such as cooperative learning and peer-to-peer teaching, and the broader field of team learning and performance, including concepts like psychological safety, group conflict resolution, and feedback routines. Each week, you will engage in hands-on activities to apply these concepts by designing, observing, and participating in collaborative learning experiences. As part of a critical reflective practice, you will work in teams to use these tools to enhance your own learning in class. The module will focus on real-world examples of teams learning in various contexts, such as schools, musical groups, hospital teams, and athletic teams. Collaboratively, you will design a final project that documents and analyzes team learning in action. Ultimately, this module offers to equip you with practical tools applicable to your university courses and for your future professional practice.