Grant program: Teaching and Learning Development Grant (TLDG)

Grant recipient: John Alderete, Department of Linguistics

Project team: Keith Leung, research assistant

Timeframe: January 2021 to October 2022

Funding: $725.00

Courses addressed:

LING 280 – Language in the Real World
LING 321 – Phonology (undergraduate)
LING 800 – Phonology (graduate level)

Description: For this project, we will investigate what kinds of projects work best in teams, and what is the best size for a team. In both research institutions like SFU and in industry, working in teams generally leads to stronger outcomes and more efficient workflows. To be successful in research, and the world of work more generally, one needs to know how to work effectively in teams. Furthermore, students are more engaged in project-based learning where they are given the opportunity to define their own research objectives, the skills they want to learn, and the methods they want to use to address a problem. We want to know if projects involving programming and working with large data sets is possible in groups. Furthermore, we would like to know how they compare with experimental projects and analytical work requiring introspection and intuition.

This project will assess success in teams by creating original projects in both graduate and undergraduate projects and assessing team performance with the group cohesiveness scale at three points in each class. We will then examine how project type and team size affects this measure, skill development, and problem assessment.  

Questions addressed:

• How does project type affect team performance?
• How does team size affect team performance?
  

Knowledge sharing: I will share all materials associated with the projects, including project design instructions, materials for individual projects, skills development modules, and instructional videos associated with the modules. In addition, I will share my final report which will document my findings.

Keywords: Project-based learning, teamwork, Linguistics, graduate students, undergraduate students, OTWorkPlace