Working on projects is an important part of many courses in the area of Information Systems (IS), where most of projects require extensive team work. To motivate students to work on common team activities and to evaluate adequately their personal contribution to the project different methods are used. This paper presents an approach to teamwork assessment in projects that support teaching several courses in an IS undergraduate program.
The last curriculum for IS undergraduate education – IS 2010 curriculum [
The students, enrolled in the courses, are encouraged to take a very active role in the learning process, working on team projects. Students teams consist of 6 to 10 members. The projects usually are focused on small information systems. During the last several academic year employees from IT companies have been involved in the course, playing the role of the customer.
Students work on projects performing a set of assignments, that are
preliminary defined. At the end of the course every team presents a high-level
logical design of the system characteristics – described by use case modelling and
UML diagrams, and some preliminary elements of the UI design of the systems.
As an intermediate step several models (flow, sequence and artifact models) of
the Contextual design are required [
The second course focuses on the organizational side of the software
development. The Project Management course introduces basic concepts of the
PMI methodology – process groups and knowledge areas, cost estimation, project
scheduling, quality management [
As most of the assignments are result of extensive team work, it is very
important for all team members to work regularly and with full capacity. Moreover,
students continue to work in the same teams in the Project management course,
so it is important to see what they have gained from their collaboration during the
first course and how to improve upon it during the next course.
2.2 The method/approach
To evaluate the team work during the course IS Analysis and Design and to help
students understand the importance of their role in the team project we conducted
a survey among students that participated in the course IS Analysis and Design
during 2017-18 academic year. Our study covers fifty four students across
six teams. Forty seven of them continue to work in the next course – Project
Management. Forty students filled in the questionnaire.
2.3 The Questionaire
The questionaire focused on students perceptions of team work during the IS
Analysis and Design course. The questions (based on some ideas of [
Q1. How effectively did your team work together on this project?
Poorly Well Very Well Q2. What are the main reasons for the difficulties if they were any in your teamwork? (max 3) Q3. What percentage of your team participated in all team activities of the project? Q4. What percentage of your team was fully prepared for all team activities of the project? Q5. Give one example of what went right on this project.
Q6. Give one example of what went wrong on this project.
Q7. Describe a specific practical skill you learned from the team that you probably would not have learned working alone.
Q8. Describe a theoretical concept (definition, model, method, etc.) you learned easier working on common team task.
Q9. Describe something (concept, model, practical skill, etc.) which the members of your team have learned from you and which they probably would not have learned otherwise.
Q10. Which of your individual skills could be improved, so as to improve the overall teamwork during the next project? Q11. What will you do differently on the next project taking into account the experience gained from this project?
Overall, students showed positive attitude towards their teamwork during the course. Although the questionaire could be submitted without answers, most students answered all eleven questions. Below we present the results (for every question) from the interview. A brief assessment of the answers of each question is made.
The Q1 is a structured question about the effectiveness of the teamwork on the project. The students are asked to select one of the three possible answers, evaluating the overall team performance as Poor, Well or Very well. The distribution of answers is shown in the following Table 1: 50%
Q1 – Very well 25% 75% 28.57% 100% 50%
The lack of answer “Poor” shows that students appreciate their efforts and results obtained and consider the projects as successful ones.
In two of the teams the members give the same answer – Well (Team 2.1) and Very well (Team 3.1) for performance of the team. The expressed different opinions in the other four teams can be explained with different level of criticism and precision of selfevaluation of members, which is evident from the diversing answers to the questions Q2, Q3 and Q4.
The question allows a free response and up to 3 different reasons can be described. The analysis of the answers identifies two main groups of reasons.
The first group of reasons considers the organization of the face- to-face meetings of teams. More than 33% of the respondents share that it is very difficult to find when exactly the team members can meet each other so as to discuss some issues crucial for the project. Other aspects here are: insufficient number of meetings, not clearly defined agenda, lack of enthusiasm and active participation in discussions, disagreement in expressed opinions and inability to take decisions by consensus.
The second group comprises reasons which are related to task management: wrong definition of scope of tasks, inaccurate procedures for task assignment, bad coordination of work, poor estimation of the time, needed for a task, late start of the work on tasks, late submission of individual results with no enough time these results to be further evaluated and incorporated into the final deliverables.
The purpose of the questions Q3 is to reveal whether there are free riders
among the team members. According to the definition given in [
Respondents have to estimate the percentage of members, participating in all team activities. Some students refuse to answer, unable to give a precise and reasonable answer due to the diversity of scope and complexity of the team activities and the context in which they have been accomplished. The average of numerical values of answers given within the team is shown in Table 2 and can be used as an indicator of the team strength. On the base of the results teams must find the free riders and decide how to incorporate them.
The goal of the question Q4 is to assess the percentage of members who are fully prepared for all team activities. This will outline how strong the kernel of the team is, comprising responsible students with appropriate knowledge, skills and experience, who can be considered as a main driving force. The average of numerical values of answers given within the team is shown in Table 3. The calculated values (except for Team 3.2) are too high to be realistic and we have doubts that the question is not understood and interpreted properly by the responders.
These two questions concern overall evaluation on the work during the project.
As is shown in the left part of the Table 2, the most frequent answer is “Keep deadlines”. This reveals not only the fact that students realize its significance for the success of the project, but points also the effectiveness of the approach selected by the lecturer to assign lower grade in case of later submission.
The second top answer is “Successful submission of the project”, showing the satisfaction of the students that at the end and their efforts have been fruitful.
On the next position are two answers – “Good cooperation” and the more general one – “Good teamwork style”. Such recognition of the role of the teamwork can motivate students to try to improve it.
For the question 6 – “Give one example of what went wrong on this project”, the top answers comprise two examples of time management errors and one example for defects in deliverables. The later gives the idea lecturers to define more checks for the quality of deliverables, introducing some new forms, e.g. peer review. 3 6 4 1 1 5 6 2 1 1 1 1 2 1 1 1 1 1 3 4 4 1
The majority of the responses reveal typical issues of team work – listening to others, tolerance towards colleagues, hearing different viewpoint; agreeing with the groups’ opinion; expressing own opinion even when the group disagrees, distributing teamwork evenly, considering the emgagement of the team members. One student marks the ability to share tasks with others and after that – to merge all parts into one result.
A few students note technical difficulties, concerning specific elements of the assignments -, presenting all system functionality with use cases, domain modeling, diagram modeling.
Questions Q8 and Q9 identify specific topics, that students learn during the course. Both questions reveal major concepts, that are better understood in team work. Most concepts are noted in both answers – as better explained, and as better understood through team discussions.
Q9 Describe something which the members of your team have learned from you and which they probably would not have learned otherwise Interview preparing FURPS+ Use case description UC- fully dressed Domain model Flow model Sequence model 2 4 6 3 3
It is interesting to mention that the most widely discussed concept is the Domain model. In spite of the target group consisting of students in their IS bachelor degree, the concept raises a lot of issues because of its complexity.
The purpose of including the questions Q10 and Q11 in the questionnaire is to give the students a chance to make some suggestions for improvements on the base of their individual experience, gained during the project. We believe that the acquired knowledge will ensure higher motivation and realized ability to change for the better in the future.
The idea behind Q10 and Q11 is to provoke identification and reflection of
some soft skills, influencing teamwork [
Two students (20%) didn’t answer these questions. There are some general answers as “to apply the best practices, mentioned in the answer of the Q5” and/ or “to avoid the bad practices, mentioned in the answer of the Q6”.
The questions Q10 and Q11 are free-answer questions – the respondents
answer in their own words. So we receive a variety of answers, expressing
different opinions about some constructive changes to be made in a next project.
In order to summarize the answers of Q10 and Q11 in a systematic way, we adopt
the classification of the soft skills, proposed in [
Personal:
Self-management, know-how for a particular task, efficiency of the individual work and contribution, preliminary research for each task, optimized performance, regular attendance of lectures, self-confidence, prompt decision making, trust and friendliness towards members of the team. Situational:
Finishing tasks early enough to be evaluated, time management, an even workload distribution, joint work on tasks, better planning for tasks, ability to analyze the teamwork process so as to improve it, learning of the theoretical concepts necessary for accomplishment of the project tasks, improved performance through structuring data and handouts, asking for help and support in difficult situations, increased impact of the teamwork, proper goal setting, controlled requirements satisfaction, peer review as a part of internal task evaluation, selecting appropriate level of detail in communications, thoughtful evaluation before submission of the project deliverables.
Interpersonal:
More informal meetings to know each other better, responsiveness, listening to opinions of other team members, defending one’s ideas and suggestions, better efforts coordination, explanation of the made decisions, clear communication among team members, giving examples to support proposals, conflict resolution, tolerance in disputes, leadership skills, patience and empathy in relationships within the team, open expression of opinions and ideas.
Each team can discuss this generalized version of the answers and decide how many and which of them will be chosen as objects for improvement during the continuation of the project.
In this paper an approach to teamwork assessment for projects in IS courses has been presented. A survey has been accomplished as a first step toward achieving the main goal: to teach students to appreciate the collaborative work and be efficient in it.
The survey seems to be useful for both students and lecturers.
Answering questions from the questionnaire, the students have the possibility to look upon teamwork from different points of view. Each student can create the awareness about the significance of the teamwork. The study helps in identification of some individual soft skills, which can be object for the improvement of a student’s overall performance.
There are a number of benefits for lecturers, too. For some course topics, pointed out by students as more difficult and unclear, the lecturer could decide to change the content and style of their presentation, e.g. providing more handouts. In the course on project management some techniques for the enhancement of teamwork could be recommended.
We intend to continue tracing and evaluating teamwork and individual students’ efforts during the second part of the projects. Each team will discuss the results of the study and decide what is worth being changed. At the end of the projects the same teamwork assessment will be made in order to find if there are any positive results to be reported.