Your  Account:

Team Projects Toolkit

decorative graphic

When students work in teams, they can develop a set of interpersonal skills that will be beneficial in the workplace. And in teams students can create more complex, authentic projects where they engage in higher level thinking skills. Research has also shown that students working in cooperative teams to solve problems outperform individuals competing with each other.

This guide aims to provide Instructors and students with the guidance and tools they'll need to manage team projects. It can be used in conjunction with any of the media toolkits.

Instructor Resources

Team Project Design


Team Setup and Collaboration Tools

  • Team Setup
  • Teams (Groups) in Cougar Courses
  • Cougar Courses Collaboration Tools
    • Group Discussions - Discussions provide a space for interactive communication between group members. Students are able to add text, images, video, audio and even "like" other student's posts
    • Collaborations - Collaborations allows you to create shared documents, PowerPoints, or Excel sheets that are available to groups of students.
    • Peer Review: Peer review is available for both Assignments and Discussions and allows students to provide feedback to their peers.
    • Perusall: Perusall is a third-party tool that is integrated into Canvas. This tool allows for group annotations (including questions) on an article, video or audio file. Students can respond to the annotations of their peers.
    • Pages: You can create Pages that are editable by the students. This can be used to create wikis, glossaries, etc.!
    • Flip: Flip is a free video tool that is integrated into Canvas. Students can record, edit and share videos using their phones, tablets and laptops.
  • Other Collaboration Tools
    • Microsoft Whiteboard - Microsoft offers a whiteboard tool that is available to all CSUSM faculty & students through your Microsoft 365 account. They have great whiteboard templates that you can use for brain storming, project planning, etc.
    • Microsoft Office 365All CSUSM faculty & students have access to the full Microsoft Office 365 suite. There are over 30 apps available, many of which can be used for group collaboration. Apps such as Swayallow you to create reports and presentation and share them with the rest of your class. 
    • Zoom: All CSUSM faculty & students have access to Zoom, a webconferencing tool. Zoom has various features such as screen-sharing, recording, breakout rooms, polling, whiteboarding tools, and some new features such as notes, surveys and clips.
    • Poll EverywherePoll Everywhere is an engaging tool that is versatile and helps keeps students engaged through the use of polling, quizzing, competitions, q&a, etc. While polling usually happens in person or during a synchronous meetings, Poll Everywhere can also be used in an asynchronous setting to capture student data, quiz students and create visuals such as word clouds that can be shared later. Note: Instructors should request a Poll Everywhere license by emailing cchelp@csusm.edu before getting started. Poll Everywhere can be integrated into your Canvas course (for grading purposes).


Assessment

  • Assessing Teams

    In addition to evaluating the team's final product, you'll also want to gather information on the group's overall effectiveness and each individual team member's contributions.

  • Assessment Tools

    The assessment tool you choose will depend a number of factors, including whether you want the feedback given by reviewers to be visible to the reviewee as-is, moderated by you, or completely private.

    Unfortunately there is no dedicated evaluation tool in Canvas, but there are a few ways to use Assignments and Quizzes to administer evaluations. These will require varying levels of manual data consolidation. 

    • If you want students to see the reviews about them: Peer Review Assignment in Canvas
    • If you want to keep the reviews private or moderate them, and want the easiest data output to work with: Peer Evaluation in Canvas using New Quizzes
    • If you want to keep the reviews private or moderate them, and do not mind manual data entry/consolidation: Provide your students with a peer evaluation template in Word, have them fill it out, and submit to an Assignment.
    • Teammates:  This is a free online tool outside of Canvas for managing student peer evaluations and feedback.

Student Resources

  • Working in a Team

    The Language of Teamwork - phrases to help you express agreement and disagreement, run a meeting, build relationships and motivate.

    If your instructor hasn't provided these, use the docs in Team Setup above to assign roles and set some groundrules.

  • Tools for Success

    Design & Project Management  
    Microsoft Whiteboard - Microsoft offers a whiteboard tool that is available to all CSUSM faculty & students through your Microsoft 365 account. They have great whiteboard templates that you can use for brain storming, project planning, etc!

    Microsoft Office 365All CSUSM faculty & students have access to the full Microsoft Office 365 suite. There are over 30 apps available, many of which can be used for group collaboration. Apps such as Swayallow you to create reports and presentation and share them with the rest of your class. 

    Meeting Online 
    Zoom: All CSUSM faculty & students have access to Zoom, a webconferencing tool. Zoom has various features such as screen-sharing, recording, whiteboarding tools, and some new features such as notes.


License

Creative Commons License
This work by Susan Wilson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.