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Short description

Keep, problem, try – or KPT – retrospective is a structured workshop method that teams can use to identify and discuss team’s current strengths, issues, and development ideas. The format is flexible in terms of content: in addition to discussing collaboration and work practices, it can also be utilised for reflecting elements related to project substances. In the following section, the focus will be solely on applying the retrospective for the improvement of teamwork. 

As the name implies, the essence of the method is to discuss a group’s collaboration and work practices through three distinct categories: 1) Keep: What has gone well and what should be preserved? 2) Problem: What kinds of challenges did the group encounter, and what could be improved? And 3) Try: Which new things could the team try and how can the challenges be solved? To ensure that the voices of each team member is heard and respected, it is usually a good idea to conduct the exercise in two parts. In the first part, each team member thinks about Keep, Problem and Try issues and writes them down as individuals. Reserve roughly 5–10 minutes for this step. In the second part, everybody shares their Post-it notes and thoughts one-by-one. Then, the team reflects and discusses their observations together. To increase the likelihood of teams implementing the results of the reflection into practice, it is recommended to task teams with selecting and testing a few of their ideas and, if necessary, spend additional time to further develop them for proper implementation. Depending on the size of the teams, it is recommended to reserve roughly 20–30 minutes for this. 

Since the format is quite simple, students tend to conduct the workshop independently during class without facilitation, as long as the instructions are clear. Facilitation is, however, also an option if one has the resources and time for it, and can be beneficial if your students have very few experiences with working as a team.

Reflecting on the workshop at a later stage is also recommended: ask students to describe their key insights from the workshop and what kind of ideas they come up with during the ‘try’ step. This demonstrates the value of the workshop, and it can also provide inspiration for all teams as they hear about the development ideas of other teams. If this is done in-class, it can also prove to students that they are not alone with their issues; all teams have their own struggles, and that is completely natural. However, there are other functional methods as well, such as written reflection. 

How to justify the method to students:

• Communicate that KPT workshop is not about fixing mistakes and that one does not need to have big issues for it to be valuable. First and foremost, KPT is about identifying the small things related to team operations to make the collaboration smoother and more enjoyable for everybody.
• If the students are not particularly experienced in team development, one can highlight that the exercise is not only about improving collaboration and work practices, but also learning how to conduct team development in practice and how to run internal workshops. 

Potential challenges and how to avoid them:

• Depending on how motivated and experienced the team is, there is always a risk that the team participates in the workshop with low energy or low effort. In such a situation, assigning somebody within the team as a chair for the session can help: keeping track of time, ensuring that everyone’s voice is heard, confirming that key transitions take place (moving from sharing thoughts into selecting ideas to try) etc.
• Due to the flexibility of the format, it is important to underline to the students that the objective of the workshop is to focus on collaboration, not project substance. One effective way to do this is to provide a concrete example for each category: example or two of a keep note, a problem note, and a try note.

Especially suitable if:

• You want to teach the students to conduct team development workshops themselves, since the KPT workshop is a very straightforward method.
• Students have spent some time working on their project together and complete proper assignments. If you conduct the workshop too early, coming up with discussion points might be a challenge.
• Students would benefit from focusing on improving collective performance, rather than providing individual-level feedback to each other (as this is not the focus of the KPT method)

Short description

Essays can facilitate collaboration by providing a clear structure and incentive for discussing issues that might otherwise remain under the surface. Furthermore, through identifying and written verbalisation of what works and what does not, teams are more likely to make concrete improvements that support smoother collaboration and better project outcomes.

Group reflection essays can, of course, be utilised in many ways. If you were to choose a specific approach, you could consider the following structure: start the assignment with you requesting the teams to discuss themes that are relevant to the project phase at hand collectively. Then, utilising guiding questions, ask the team to document their key takeaways and discussion points in an essay format. 

Potential and relevant themes are, of course, numerous, ranging from the division of tasks to providing feedback among team members, or from collaborative writing to handling issues with team dynamics. Select the themes that are the most relevant for your course’s learning outcomes or could foster smoother collaboration. As a general baseline, two themes that have proven to yield good results are: task allocation and handling teamwork-related challenges. 

The essays themselves can be relatively short, between 1–2 pages (A4). To ease the analysis of the essays from the teacher’s perspective, consider using peer feedback or pass/fail grading. However, it is a good idea to provide some feedback on the essays. Without any feedback, students might consider the assignments less important since teachers are not paying any attention to them.

How to justify the method to students:

• Emphasise that these essays offer a chance to pause and reflect during a busy project. Taking the time to consider how the team is working – not just what it is producing – can assist in avoiding unnecessary stress or misunderstandings at later stages.
• Especially in cases where students have limited experience in structured team development, highlight that these assignments are not only about improving the current project, but also about learning transferable collaboration skills, such as group reflection, running internal reviews, and identifying development needs.

Potential challenges and how to avoid them:

• Teams might allocate the reflection and writing tasks to an individual student, which means that most students skip the reflection step completely. One way to prevent this is to state that an individual member can write the essay, but the reflection should include contributions from all team members as a collective, as it helps your team develop its practices.
• With tools like ChatGPT, there is also a risk of students generating essays without performing the reflection. You can reduce this risk by requiring specific and concrete examples in the text. For example, ‘describe a recent moment when collaboration was particularly effective’ or ‘provide an example of a challenge and how your team addressed it.’ This prevents students from submitting an AI-generated essay or, at the very least, from skipping the reflection step completely. 

Especially suitable if:

• Your contact time with students is limited, and you want to support on-going team development between teaching sessions.
• You want to encourage students to take shared responsibility for team functioning without the need to intervene directly as an instructor. 

Short description

The I like, I wish is a facilitated feedback session format developed by Dr Satu Rekonen. The method is explained in detail here: . You can find a summary on how the method works and what to consider when using it below. 

I like, I wish sessions consist of two main activities: writing feedback on both individual and team level and sharing the feedback with others. Through the session, everyone in the team receives insights on their personal strengths and development areas related to collaboration. In addition, team-level strengths and improvement needs are discussed as well, making the method a very powerful collaboration development and learning tool, as it takes acknowledges different levels of collaboration. 

In terms of organising the sessions, it is recommended to assign a dedicated facilitator that runs the session for each team. Extensive training is not necessary, but it is recommended that the facilitator familiarises themselves with the materials provided at  and has participated in a facilitated I like, I wish session before. This process eases the facilitators job and helps them run the sessions confidently. The task of facilitation is to ensure that the tone stays constructive and that feedback is shared in a respectful and supportive manner. Being positive and making things sound easy and straightforward is the easiest way for the facilitator to support this process. 

How to justify the method to students:

• Emphasise that teams often make assumptions about how collaboration is going – this session creates a space to replace assumptions with genuine input from peers.
• Highlight that the method is not only about giving feedback, but also about learning and practicing how to provide feedback in a safe and supportive environment, which one rarely has the opportunity to do.   

Potential challenges and how to avoid them:

• Students might hesitate to write and communicate feedback to each other, especially if it is related to development areas. To support the feedback process, you can, for example, provide an extended list of elements to consider when working on feedback (punctuality, communicating progress, responding to messages etc.). It is also a good idea to remind people that if they do not provide any feedback on improvement areas, they take away another person’s opportunity to grow and learn.
• If the tone becomes too negative or defensive, the facilitator should guide the discussion back to its purpose and remind students to focus on behaviours rather than personalities, and to frame development points as suggestions rather than judgments.

Especially suitable if:

• The course includes longer-term project teams where members work closely together, and they have enough time to build trust.
• You want to teach students how to provide and receive feedback constructively, which is a critical skill in all professional and academic settings.