Designing management and innovation courses for team-based learning

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And we combined the two, really, to create an interdisciplinary team-based module. So we have small groups of students from different faculties, different schools, different genders, some UK, some non-UK, working together on real-world innovation projects, which we develop in partnership with local, national and international organisations.

And through a series of facilitated activities and out-of-class working, the students address their challenges, and in the final session, they pitch their ideas to a senior panel of industry and academic experts. So, it's partly about business and innovation, but a lot of it is also about key employability and life skills. So, team working, communication skills, commercial awareness. And one of the key ones for us is around resilience and managing change because, as we all know, the world is changing.

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And I'm highlighting this here because it meant that over several years, we kept reading about the experiences the students made engaging with this module and what they learned. And there were really interesting accounts of almost transformational learning in the area of teamwork, like students writing about how they had always hated teamwork and suddenly they understood, actually, this is doable, this can be even fun.

Or students who felt frustrated at some point of the module because we gave them a little bit of pushback to kind of rethink their ideas and how they write about how this idea of resilience suddenly made sense and how you need to control your feelings sometimes to engage more productively.

So we sat on this treasure trove of lots of observations of how students collaborate in interdisciplinary teams. And the kind of learning they had taken away from that. And of course, this informed to extend our further development of the module. And every time we learned a little bit, every time we improved it. But it also raised deeper questions. And I think that was the point, Tony, you know, when we then had the idea of maybe doing actually some research about it.

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So we decided to focus on a few areas. One is around reflection and some of the, sort of, transformative change that Lena's mentioned. And then there's some more of the almost practical things, if you like, about team-based learning, particularly in an interdisciplinary and diverse team context.

ne of the areas we'd like to [: 00:04:00

So that's one of the areas we sort of drill down in our research. Although we've covered a number of areas, haven't we, Lena?

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So with that in mind, and going through the usual ethics procedures and the project development procedures, we ended up with quite a structured project where we examined and analyzed in depth, I think about 60 reports and we conducted some interviews with former students we had, alumni that already left, but also those who had just engaged with us in the module.

And that was exceedingly useful to kind of see how the learning developed over time and what students had taken away from this. So, that kind of in-depth analysis brought us some kind of areas of basically evidence-based guidelines that we then started sharing with our colleagues, in particular those who are interested in working with groups and teams of students.

Because that is something, of course, we do in many modules, not just ours, but that often colleagues had reported having problems with or where student feedback suggested that students were not really fully enjoying that experience.

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Then there was another one: "There have been elements that have taken into the working world with me." So this came from quote from one of the alumni interviews, and the student, the alumnus goes on to say about the team working element, the cultural differences, the stakeholder awareness.

And then finally, another one: "it was beneficial to work in a team with people from different disciplines because it was very teamwork orientated. It taught me collaboration skills and how to innovate collaboratively." So that was one of our first findings, if you like, and recommendations to our colleagues in Leeds and elsewhere is actually, wherever you can, try to get the students to work on some team-based activities. And if you can, make them diverse, whether that's within a school or as in our case, interdisciplinary, because the students really value and benefit from that.

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So, of course, we have lots of students who come from abroad, where the language is not their mother tongue. We have students from very different cultural backgrounds and teamworking suits some of them more than others. So, as Tony has already foreshadowed earlier in our conversation, we got more and more interested in terms of what are the methods and techniques that help these diverse teams to kind of gel and to come together and to also enable those who are a bit more introvert or who have some language problems to really make the contribution and be part of the team that they would like to make.

where we developed findings, [: 00:08:00

Tony, would you like to explain that a little more?

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And from our research, we found a number of benefits of that. One of the key benefits we find that this really enables inclusivity in that when the students are providing their input diverging, not being influenced by others, every student has a voice. So we encourage everybody to provide input. And some of our research shows this is particularly important for students who may be less confident, didn't want to get involved in the conversation at the beginning, maybe worried that they will be judged. Students who are more introverted. And the other area of students we found this was really useful for was students where English wasn't their first language.

ody's ideas are listened to. [: 00:10:00

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And to me, it also raised questions learning about this - what kind of research is it now that we are actually doing here? You know, on the one hand, you could argue, “well, you applied a method and now you see it's working well, that's very nice for you”. But on the other hand, I think there is value in learning on a deeper level what this method actually does and how it actually helps students to have a better experience.

And I think there is a lot of value in driving our thinking about how we engage, for example, with students from different backgrounds in the classroom, and how we can actually improve inclusivity by giving those who have language barriers the time to really collect and express their thoughts. And I think from that perspective, there is almost a blurry boundary in pedagogical research that is this informed teaching practice, which is very much within our teaching portfolio and research, which may not be the most advanced postmodern methodology that we can possibly dream of, and yet still delivers structured insights that can actually help us moving forward.

orize to a degree. So, as we [: 00:12:00

So, while I'm still grappling with the analysis of these diaries over time and the kind of pattern analysis that is within that, that, of course, kind of finding is the more abstract finding that, you know, we would try to position in a very academic journal. But then there are the findings that by and large we have shared now and are distributing, which are more like evidence-based guidelines, maybe not as theoretical, but very useful. And when we took them to the Advance HE conference, we had really good, feedback on that as well. Tony, would you like to add to that?

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Sounds very simple, but both in academia, and I can tell you from my background in industry, that often doesn't happen. And our research shows it makes a huge difference to the way the team performs. So just a simple recommendation like that, Lena, I think can make a lot of difference.

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ned so much from this. A lot [: 00:14:00

So, I would really like this podcast to be an encouragement to our colleagues to really consider whether pedagogical research, even if it's not their main area of expertise, could really be beneficial for them to make the most of the teaching they're already doing, to improve the teaching they're already doing, but also to help all of us to learn and to improve and to fill some of these demands that we rightfully put upon ourselves of, you know, we want to be more inclusive, we want to be more supportive, we want to generate a good environment, we want to enable our students to do well in a very complex difficult setting they're encountering when they leave the university.

Yeah, all of these challenges, I think it's really helpful to have the thinking time and the research time to approach this more strategically, in a more structured way, because we are researchers after all. I mean, that's something we can do.

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We're using this research, embedding it into, "well, we know our students had a challenge with this. So how can we help them?" Having empathy for them. And one of the things, from the research, in the way that teams work together, was encouraging the students to have empathy for each other, empathy for their teammates. And just a, a lovely little story. One of the things we say is working in a team, you are going to have challenges. You know, every team I've ever worked in has had an issue at some stage. So don't expect that you won't have challenges. It's how you overcome them that's important, to have empathy for your teammates.

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So, you know, this empathy side of it, which did come out very strongly in our research, that when the students are working in a team, the more empathy they have for each other, the more effective again they are as a team, and the more they'll enjoy and the more they'll learn. So I think that empathy words really important, but going back to sort of pedagogic research, I think a lot of it has to be about empathy for our students. So how can we use our findings to make sure we're improving their learning, yes, but also improving their experience of education as well.

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his is an in kind of ongoing [: 00:18:00

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So this is certainly, you know, we've had some great findings and some great experience so far, but this is something we're going to keep going.

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