Experiential Exercise in Team Formation in the Capstone: Providing Students With the Information to Make Good Team Choices

Abstract

Just as there is a tension between business professors’ practice of assigning team projects, especially in capstone courses, and students’ inclination to avoid them, there is also a tension between students’ desire to choose their own teammates and professors’ belief that they can do a better job of team creation. Professors have learned that when students choose teams, they can have problems of homogeneity, unbalanced skills, and unchosen students; however, when professors try to form teams for fairness and balance, students often resent it. This article presents a fun, engaging experiential exercise for effective team formation that combines the benefits of both student-directed and professor-directed methods. The exercise, conducted over one or two class meetings, allows students to learn about well-balanced team construction, present themselves to their classmates, interview each other, and choose who they would like to work with without the restrictions of seat proximity or prior connection. Results show students perceived that their teams were more available for meetings and exhibited more cohesiveness and higher performance than previous project teams, and strongly preferred this method. Instructions, worksheets, diagrams, and empirical support are shared in this article to allow professors to smoothly implement this exercise in their own classrooms.