Student Peer Feedback In Team Settings

Authors:

Keywords: feedback, teams, projects

Abstract: Group work is almost ubiquitous in business courses, and yet many instructors fail to address the inherent challenges students encounter when working with groups of peers. This is not only a missed learning opportunity, but also often leads to negative student experiences. Students often lack the knowledge necessary to anticipate, let alone navigate, the complicated landscape of student team dynamics. When issues do occur, students often don’t have the tools necessary to give and receive constructive feedback. We designed a feedback activity based on a short case, The Case of the Perfect Team, to create a platform to discuss issues encountered in student teams as well as providing a low-risk environment in which students can discuss how to address these issues. Our intent is to teach the case with periodic “teaching time outs” to discuss choices that can be made by both student team members and faculty advisors.