Best practices for project-based learning
Practical tools and tips for supporting student teamwork in project courses, without adding extra stress to your teaching.
What are good initial team-building exercises?
The early days of teamwork matter. Taking time to get to know one’s team and agree on ways of working lays the groundwork for trust, clarity, and smoother collaboration throughout the project. Here good team-building exercises can be very valuable.
General considerations
Getting to know one’s team is a critical early phase in any group project where students work together over an extended period. When team members are unfamiliar with each other, they may not know what kinds of skills, knowledge, working styles, motivations or goals are present in the group. This can lead to unclear expectations, inefficient collaboration, or even conflicts. Taking the time to build a shared understanding early on helps to lay the foundation for smoother teamwork and steady progress from the start. It also supports the development of mutual trust – an essential ingredient in all well-functioning teams.
There are many methods to support this early phase. Some team-building exercises focus on building familiarity and a positive group atmosphere, while others are more task-oriented, helping the group define shared practices or expectations. Both types have value. What matters most is that the activities feel purposeful, give everyone a chance to participate, and help the team take the first step towards great team dynamics and collaboration.
Quick recommendations
- Include both types of exercises: those that help team members get to know each other on a personal level, and those that support collaboration around the project task. Exercises focused on personal interests or shared experiences help build trust and ease early interaction. More task-oriented activities, such as drafting a team agreement, help the team begin aligning practical ways of collaboration. Both contribute to stronger team dynamics in different ways.
- Ensure all students feel included and comfortable, especially during lecture activities. For example, if your students are not familiar with each other, or have not yet participated in many teamwork-based courses, avoid exercises that require high levels of self-disclosure from the start. The goal is to create a positive and low-pressure starting point.
- Note that it is impossible to get to know everyone deeply through a single exercise, and this is not the point either. Teambuilding exercises are meant to start the process where team members familiarise with each other. Therefore, it is recommended to encourage teams to spend time together, for example having lunch together etc.
Methods & Tools
Short description
Team agreement is a document in which student teams define their key working principles and practices. Team agreement is usually assigned as a homework exercise, but it can be adjusted to teaching sessions, presuming there is enough time available. A typical team agreement defines how the team aims to organise their work, communicate, make decisions, resolve conflicts, as well as setting up meeting schedules and other relevant practical matters. It encourages the team to discuss and align their expectations, desires and practicalities related to collaboration during the project. While it does not ensure great team dynamics on its own, it helps teams to a great start. It can also provide a written benchmark against which team performance can be reflected at later stages of the course.
How to justify the method to students:
- Every team consist of individuals with different working styles, schedules, needs, and desires. Discussing these factors in the beginning is crucial, and a team agreement can provide structure for the process.
- Research indicates that to foster good collaboration, teams should spend enough time to get to know each other and build trust in the beginning of the project, rather than jump straight into project-related tasks. Team agreement is one way to ease this process.
Potential challenges and how to avoid them:
- If instructions for forming the team agreement are unclear, the entire exercise can feel frustrating and the focus of the discussion might veer into the contents of the team agreement, rather than discussing the desired working principles. Therefore, it is recommended that teams are provided with a simple team agreement template, with guiding questions to facilitate the conversation.
- To create a useful and functional team agreement, it is important that working principles outlined in the document are sufficiently defined. For example, if the team decides to assign somebody as a project manager or meeting secretary, it would be a good idea to try to define which tasks those roles include. The same principle applies to more abstract goals, such as ensuring that everybody is included in the decision-making. Encouraging the teams to consider how such goals can be achieved in practice and writing that down on a shared document is important.
Especially suitable if:
- The project spans several periods, as sustained teamwork and coordination outlining shared work practices is particularly important.
- Project teams include students from several disciplines. In such cases, preferred working and collaboration styles are more likely to vary between students. Here, team agreements can help aligning diverse perspectives and methodologies.
Short description
Three things in common is a very simple exercise that helps the members of newly formed teams familiarise with one another. During the exercise, team members are tasked to collectively find three non-obvious things that they all share together. This could include interests, experiences, hobbies or similar elements, provided that the common things are not shared among all course participants, such as having the same discipline. The exercise encourages individuals in the team to share their preferences and information about themselves, which helps creating mutual trust and personal relationships. To make the task a bit more fun, teams can be asked to document the common things in the form of a drawing, which tends to be an entertaining activity, it and also requires the team to start considering task allocation in a relaxed way.
How to justify the method to students:
- First discussions with a new team can feel a bit awkward, especially if students do not know all team members beforehand. Having some kind of structure – like this exercise – for students to get to know each other is very helpful, as it removes the responsibility of breaking the ice alone.
- Research indicates that to foster good collaboration, teams should spend enough time to get to know each other and build trust in the beginning of the project, rather than jump straight into project-related tasks. Three things in common works very well as an ice breaker and serves this purpose.
Potential challenges and how to avoid them:
- Identifying the obvious things people have in common, such as having a mobile phone, is effortless. Therefore, it is important to encourage students to try to find things that could be unique elements to their own team instead of focusing on general-level things that almost everybody in the class has.
- If a team genuinely attempts to identify interesting things they have in common, it can take some time, especially if the team is newly formed. Therefore, it is advisable to provide students with enough time for the exercise. For eight-person teams, a time allocation of 30 minutes has been found to work well, but naturally, with smaller teams, less time should suffice.
Especially suitable if:
- The course involves situations where group members likely do not know each other well. These include courses with students from different majors or courses taking place early in the study path.
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