Students’ teamwork experiences in online study mode: A case study of Central Queensland University

Teamwork skills are among essential graduate attributes and expected learning outcomes in built environment programs. Student teamwork is challenging, takes time and patience, and above all, fair assessment of its outcomes has proven to be complex. In online study mode, where team members are distributed across different locations and face-to-face interactions are limited or non-existant, communication and collaboration as two components of effective teamwork become even more challenging. This paper reports on students’ teamwork experiences in three units of Bachelor of Building Design course offered at Central Queensland University from November 2016 to June 2018. The three assessment items examined in these three units required teams of students to carry out a collaborative research on a topicrelated to building design and construction. As an assessment requirement, students were asked to reflect on their teamwork experiences and include in their individual submissions a statement about their teamwork processes i.e. divisions of teamwork tasks, lessons learned, and challenges they encountered with. A thematic analysis of a total number of 65 students’ comments identified a number of barriers to effective teamwork in online study mode including issues with communication and time management as well as important factors which influence team processes including team formation strategies and structures of assessment tasks. The results of the qualitative data analysis were then examined in light of the findings of existing literature on determinants of team effectiveness in virtual teams. The paper concludes with a discussion of how design educators should set up an assessment item with teamwork components, systematically support student teamwork processes, and fairly assess their teamwork outcomes, specifically for online study mode.