Team-building: Developing Teamwork Skills in College Students Using Experiential Activities in a Classroom Setting

ABSTRACT

This paper provides a systematic team-building training to fill a knowledge hole and a skills gap as well as prepare college students for better employability and future career success. The team-building training follows the interpersonal approach and utilizes adventure learning in the form of improvisational activities that can be used in a classroom setting. The team-building training enhances student learning of teams and the team development process as well as develop students’ teamwork skills. Data from a treatment group and a control group through pre- and post-measures of student perceptions are presented to determine the team-building training’s effectiveness. Correlations, t-tests, and simple linear regressions were conducted. The results support the team-building training’s effectiveness as well as students’ beliefs of developing teamwork skills and having positive attitudes about teamwork skills. Potential modifications for the team-building training are presented. Limitations and future research directions of the study are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Team-building
• teamwork skills
• adventure learning
• experiential activities
• team training

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Shelly Marasi

Shelly Marasi is an Assistant Professor of Management at Tennessee Technological University. She attained her doctoral degree from Louisiana Tech University. Her research interests include pay communication, workplace deviance, job embeddedness, social media policies in the workplace, and participant carelessness. Her teaching interests include team-building and using experiential activities, active participation, discussions, among other interactive teaching methods to help students better learn a topic and retain the information. She can be reached at [email protected].