Roles And Responsibilities In Team Projects

Abstract

What roles assure that a student learns from a team project?  This paper discusses student roles of (1) ready learner, (2) coachee, (3) contributor, (4) team member, and (5) academic scholar.  Students can gain real world experience from a team project with a practitioner “client.”  But team projects can be flawed with ambiguous activities and free-riding students.  A shift from the role of passive student to the active roles discussed in this paper can improve the team project learning experience.  This paper also presents a model that apportions responsibilities to the teacher, students, and clients for team project tasks.  Clear responsibilities can prepare students for their active roles in a team project.  A well-defined project process can minimize the ambiguity inherent in real-world projects, and help the teacher maintain his or her course workload at a manageable level.  The project steps are (1) set learning goals, (2) engage a client, (3) set project objectives, (4) implementation, (5) report results, and (6) assess performance.