Two new ideas on the value of student teamwork, including a response to negative (or fatalistic) anonymous student feedback

Context. Before I give the two ideas, here’s the context:

I’ve taught the Northwestern IEMS capstone project class for two years now. During that time, I would say that 31 out of 32 projects were successful. See this page for past projects (I’m behind on last Spring’s write-ups) and this link for our team that won first place at an IISE competition.

The main capstone class is in the spring of junior year, so the students get another real-world experience before searching for a job.

I assign students (typically four students) to the teams and the teams to clients. The students lead the projects with a faculty advisor, me, and a teaching team in the background.

It is an intense ten-week effort. One student said: “[The capstone] is definitely a beast. These are large projects on a very tight timeline…” Another said, “…they did kinda just throw us off the deep end at the beginning…”

One of my main jobs in running the class is to make sure the teams are functioning. I spend a lot of time thinking about teams: how do I stress the importance of teamwork, how do I encourage it, how do I teach it, and how do I look for team conflicts and lack of engagement during the projects.

At the end of the class, the students fill out an anonymous class evaluation.

My first idea on teamwork came from a big pattern in the class evaluations and a welcoming speech I heard to incoming USC students.

Of the 43 student free-form comments (that get released to other students), 30 of them (~70%!) were negative or fatalistic with respect to teams.

My favorite was: “This class asks the bold question of "Have you ever wanted to play academic russian roulette for credit?" Basically the entire experience is entirely determined by whether you have a good group and good client.”

Lots of the comments are like this— there is some negative or fatalistic feeling that the whole class experience depends on the luck of the draw. Here are more quotes, my emphasis added:

• Highly client & team dependent. Hope you get a good randomly assigned team or else it will be a long quarter.

• Just pray that you get the best possible group.

• CPC is entirely dependent on who your group is and if you get a good client or not, and you can’t really choose anything it’s just a matter of luck. If everything works out I think it would be a really good experience, otherwise it can suck.

• Have to hope you get a cool project.

• I had a great group and client so my experience was really good, but it's possible (and likely tbh) that you get a group where you end up doing the whole thing by yourself, in which case this class really sucks, since it's a lot of work.

• I was lucky to have an amazing team and a great client

Remember, I estimated that 31 of the 32 were successful (maybe some students disagree). And the last two comments were also part of a pattern. The students were imagining that other students would likely not have good luck and have a bad experience. But they happened to have “a great group and client” or were a lucky one with an “amazing team and great client.”

I’ve seen this pattern as a manager. I saw complaints from people who weren’t experiencing the problem, but envisioned that others might be. In many cases, no one was experiencing the issue. This seems to be happening here.

However, a random speech gave me new insight.

I was at USC’s big new student welcoming convocation this year. One of the speakers¹ had a message that was basically like this: “You didn't make the right decision to come to USC. Many things at USC will be beyond your control. Therefore, there are no right decisions. There are only decisions that you make right…. to make decisions right, there are many things that you do control... your beliefs, your attitude, your efforts, how you interpret situations, how many risks you take... "

This might explain the comments from my students. They were thinking that they got lucky with a good team and a good project. Instead, there was a lot they controlled to make it work out.

So, here is my first new teamwork idea: You don’t get lucky to be assigned to a good team and a good project; you have the ability to make them good.

My second idea about teamwork came from thinking about team engagement and networking.

As I mentioned, this class strives to ensure that everyone on the team is engaged, and I’m always looking for new ways to convey this message.

Also, as I watched last year’s IEMS class graduate, I wanted to tell them that they should treat their fellow students as their first big professional network. These students will go on to do great things. They should help each other with jobs, new opportunities, and career advice.

These two things are related.

Here is the second new teamwork idea: The value of being a good teammate is not the grade or learning how to work on teams, but rather strengthening your first professional network.

So if you are a good teammate and engaged in the project (which the vast majority are), it only helps you strengthen your network. Years later, people will remember you as a good teammate and want to work with you, give you good recommendations, and give you opportunities.

I’m not sure if either of these ideas will have much impact, but I’ll give them a go.

1. Here is the YouTube link to the welcoming convocation. The talk I quoted was from 34:11 to 37:16 by Varun Soni.