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EVALUATION OF A TEAMWORK EFFECTIVENESS

INTERVENTION WITH INTERPROFESSIONAL PROJECT TEAMS

Abstract All undergraduate students in Illinois Institute of Technology are required to complete two InterProfessional (IPRO®) projects as part of their General Education Requirement. One of the important meta-objectives of the IPRO program is the development of individual skills need to assure team competency. A Teamwork Functioning survey followed by a very brief intervention protocol for developing team effectiveness is now in its third semester of implementation; results from the first two semesters (Trial 1 and Trial 2) are reported here. During Trial 1, students from a subset of eleven teams completed the Survey in week 5, received prompt feedback of their own responses compared with other teams, had a facilitated discussion on how to improve team functioning, and created an Action Plan for improvement; at the end of the semester they again completed the Survey. The remaining 23 teams participated only in the last step by completing the Teamwork functioning survey at the end of the semester. Results indicated that the Intervention Teams significantly improved their perceived teamwork functioning. During Trial 2, all teams completed the Teamwork Survey about four weeks after teams were formed, and again at the end of the semester (week 15). Although results showed an overall improvement in perception of team functioning between weeks 4 and 15, the Intervention subset overall did not show a larger increase than the “control” teams. One interpretation of this result is that simply assessing teamwork functioning may provide sufficient intervention to prompt teamwork improvement. Future efforts, guided by the current semester’s results, will focus on how to identify teams that are most in need of intervention and the most efficient and effective way to provide it.

Introduction

Although the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology’s Engineering Criteria 2006- 2007 [1] and many employers emphasize the need to develop effective teamwork skills, there is little consensus about the best strategies for developing such competencies among undergraduate students. There are some excellent guidelines on incorporating teamwork into existing courses [2]. Another approach to developing teamwork skills is the Interprofessional Projects Program (IPRO®) at our university. The IPRO program aims to build ethical, teamwork/communication and project management skills in undergraduate students that enhances their performance in project based real-world work settings. Even when promising strategies have been identified, the other major challenge is to develop ways of measuring whether the intended learning goals are being met. An important guide to developing self-report instruments to measure the professional outcomes specified by the ABET criterion 3 has been provided by Immekus, Tracy, Yoo, Maller, French, & Oakes [3]. They pointed out the importance of either identifying existing measures that are appropriate for assessing progress toward meeting the ABET EC 2000 Criterion 3 standards, now reaffirmed in the most recent standards [1]. They suggested (a) identifying existing measures that are appropriate for assessing progress, (b) modifying existing measures, or (c) developing new measures. We have chosen to modify an existing measure for teamwork effectiveness and a strategy for improving team excellence.

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Huyck, M., & Gaddini, A., & Gupta, N., & Ferguson, D. (2006, June), Evaluation Of A Teamwork Effectiveness Intervention With Interprofessional Project Teams Paper presented at 2006 Annual Conference & Exposition, Chicago, Illinois. 10.18260/1-2--609