Student-Led Project Teams

Abstract

We studied group and individual co-regulatory and self-regulatory strategies of self-managed student project teams using data from intragroup peer evaluations and a postproject survey. We found that high team performers shared their research and knowledge with others, collaborated to advise and give constructive criticism, and demonstrated moral responsibility by respecting project management processes and communication protocols. Low team performers lacked self-regulatory strategies to work autonomously and clearly explain their research and its purpose, to ask for clarification, and to work autonomously. Consequently, effective regulatory strategies are crucial for high team performance, for team skills development, and for preparing business and management students for future team-based work environments.

Keywords

co-regulation self-regulation student-self-managed project teams content-related learning interpersonal relations

Introduction

These days, in addition to professional knowledge, the expert employee is expected to possess social, communication, and cooperation skills; flexibility to work in different contexts; and the capacity to manage information and others (Henderson, 2005; Kalla, 2006; Macdonald, 1996). To develop these skills, students are often required to work in teams outside the classroom environment. Out-of-class team projects require students to self-manage the learning process, and reflect the increasing use of self-managed teams in the workplace. The social psychology and educational fields (Cartney & Rouse, 2006; Cockrell, Caplow, & Donaldson, 2000; Hmelo-Silver, 2004; Miller, Trimbur, & Wilkes, 1994; Roschelle & Teasley, 1995; Salonen, Vauras, & Efklides, 2005; Slavin, 1996) and management fields (Hansen, 2006; McCorkle et al., 1999; Williams, Beard, & Rymer, 1991) have all highlighted the benefits of collaborative learning and teamwork in terms of knowledge co-construction; interpersonal, social, and management skills development; workplace emulation; diversity appreciation; critical thinking and problem solving; increased motivation; and improved comprehension and information retention.

However, these benefits are typically observed in high-performing teams. For example, Stefanou, Stolk, Prince, Chen, and Lord (2013) found that students in high-performing teams regulated content learning by relying “on each other as experts in the field, able to step in and explain what was needed or how to approach a problem” (p. 118). Team members share, discuss, and critique each other’s parts to achieve high-quality work. In addition, high-performing team members self-monitor and self-reflect on both the team’s progress and their own progress toward attaining their goals. As a result, they find opportunities to regulate nonproductive team members because they perceive that rewards and social acceptance (Freeman & Greenacre, 2011) depend on adequate collaboration mechanisms in achieving a successful group performance. In contrast, low-performing teams rarely set goals or monitor goal attainment. They experience planning, coordination, and organization difficulties and are generally less engaged in the project. McCorkle et al. (1999) found that low-performing team members miss meetings, seldom participate even if they attend meetings, and produce low-quality work due to diminishing returns. Most important, they fail to realize that teammates are a source of learning into which they can tap to aid their own learning.

Therefore, this study aims to explore team members’ regulation strategies in student-managed project teams by analyzing peer evaluations and responses to a postproject survey. The study received approval from the university research ethics office and the department chair. The research is grounded in sociocognitive theory of self-regulation and a sociocultural perspective of how individuals co-regulate engagement and participation in certain situations. Using these two dimensions, students’ subjective evaluations and justification of team members’ participation and collaboration provide insight into student management of content-related and interpersonal learning issues. Furthermore, identifying and understanding students’ own regulatory strategies while working on team projects will contribute to evidence-based practices for enhancing students’ capacity to self-manage teamwork. The study addresses the following two questions:

Research Question 1: What regulatory strategies do students use to manage content-related processes (i.e., inquiry skills, synthesis, presentation skills) and interpersonal relations (i.e., team building, conflict resolution, logistics)?

Research Question 2: Do regulatory strategies differ between high team performers and low team performers, and if so, how?

The article first presents the background literature on student-led group project teams and provides a theoretical framework for the study. Next, the research methodology is outlined, followed by the results. The article then presents lessons learned from the findings and concludes with limitations of the study.

Problems With Group Projects

Underlying the use of team projects is the implicit assumption that placing students in teams will automatically develop collaborative behavior, teamwork, and team-building skills, as well as discipline-specific knowledge. However, studies have found that placing students in teams in a “sink or swim” manner (Vik, 2001) may have little effect on learning course content or learning about teams and team development (Bacon, 2005; Chen, Donahue, & Klimoski, 2004; Hansen, 2006). Other studies have revealed problems that inhibit team effectiveness, such as social loafing, specialization of labor and disparity of learning, transactional and opportunity costs, grade fairness, and stifling of individual creativity and innovation. McCorkle et al. (1999) found that the major reason students dislike group projects is social loafing. Students cite instances of social loafers contributing less than their fair share to group effort, yet reaping the benefits of other students’ efforts because of a common grade for the entire group. This, of course, leads to the problem of grade fairness and whether to assign grades based on distributive formulae (Davison, Mishra, Bing, & Frink, 2014), intragroup peer evaluations (May & Gueldenzoph, 2006), or regular and systematic team feedback on specific criteria throughout the project (Brooks & Ammons, 2003; Hillier & Dunn-Jensen, 2012).

Additionally, social loafing is often the result of specialization of labor. When teams divide tasks among team members, students with low goal achievement orientation can shirk their responsibilities. Specialization of labor also reduces group interaction and students’ ability to grasp the full scope and complexity of the project (Bacon, 2005; Neu, 2012). Furthermore, specialization leads to uneven learning outcomes (Aggarwal & O’Brien, 2008) and limits students’ understanding of what their colleagues have accomplished (McCorkle et al., 1999). Hall and Buzwell (2012) suggest that free riding may be involuntary and a result of students’ first language not being the language of instruction, thus adding pressure on students who must deal with project requirements as well as insufficient communication skills. Also, transactional and opportunity costs, such as scheduling and attending meetings to discuss the project, travelling to and from meetings, respecting deadlines, and making trade-offs between classes (McCorkle, et al., 1999; Neu, 2012), create administrative problems in student-led project teams.

In educational settings and in the workplace, reputations are gained when others perceive that an individual is able to perform tasks competently, and is cooperative and helpful toward others (Zinko, Ferris, Humphrey, Meyer, & Aime, 2012). Nevertheless, issues of free riding, division of labor, and transactional and opportunity costs remain problematic. Neu (2012) found that high-performing teams confront these issues proactively and reactively. Students deal with inequity of labor reactively by contributing supplemental labor. Proactively, they deal with inequity by not granting responsibilities to a student for a task that can negatively influence group outcome. In other words, when group members perceive another group member as someone who will create future inequity, they identify that member as untrustworthy. That member then gains the reputation of being uncooperative and ineffective. As a result, team members proactively assume responsibility for additional tasks to avoid having to deal with inequity later. They divide up labor based on abilities and assign labor based on trustworthiness. Thus, students who are highly engaged in the project outcome and in resolving issues of social loafing and transactional costs are those who ultimately benefit from working in teams.

A Framework for Analyzing Teamwork Regulation

Collaboration is defined as a “coordinated, synchronous activity that is the result of a continued attempt to construct and maintain a shared conception of a problem” (Roschelle & Teasley, 1995, p. 70). Research on student-led collaborative activities indicates that successful collaborative learning takes place in three ways: (1) the group’s coordinated and co-regulated engagement in the “joint problem space” (Teasley & Roschelle, 1993, p. 229), (2) student self-regulation of learning (Stefanou et al., 2013; Zimmerman, 2000), and (3) high-level co-regulation (Volet, Summers, & Thurman, 2009). The joint problem space refers to the interrelationship between content-related processes and interpersonal processes and how students negotiate the cognitive and social demands of these two processes (Barron, 2003). Co-regulation or peer regulation refers to constant monitoring and regulation of joint activity, particularly in situations where one learner has gained understanding of a particular part of the task and takes on a more instructive role to help others (Volet, et al., 2009). From a sociocultural perspective, co-regulation refers to the process of supporting or scaffolding individual participation and learning within the social collaborative learning environment. From a sociocognitive perspective, co-regulation examines how groups of individuals socially regulate each other’s learning (Salonen et al., 2005). In addition, the regulatory process may produce situations of individual regulation within a group where one individual temporarily leads by providing information or assuming an informal instructional role, and situations of co-regulation as a group that involve several group members in co-regulatory metacognitive activity. Thus a collaborative learning environment implies giving and receiving ideas and clarification, providing task-related help, exchanging needed resources, information, and materials, and providing constructive feedback.

We note that Volet et al. (2009) found that successful learning is facilitated by groups’ coordinated and high-level co-regulated engagement but not all co-regulation of content learning results in co-construction of knowledge. Active participation can be limited to the simple exchange of information, sharing ideas, and clarification of material: in other words, to low-level co-regulation processes. Nevertheless, for the purposes of this study, we have included these types of exchanges in the co-regulation process because of the ethnolinguistically heterogeneous nature of the participants. Informal information exchanges and clarification requests typify multilingual and multicultural business meetings and negotiations (Kankaanranta & Planken, 2010; Scovotti & Kowalski, 2013). These episodes therefore reflect the types of interactional discourses that indeed need to be mastered for effective and efficient professional communication in multilingual situations.

In contrast to co-regulation, self-regulation occurs when individuals control “their cognitions, behaviors, motivation, emotions, task situation and context to achieve tasks” (Volet & Mansfield, 2006, p. 344). Self-regulation leads to increased self-efficacy, in other words, to learners’ beliefs in their ability to take certain necessary actions that will result in attaining desired goals or outcomes (Bandura, 1997). Students who set goals (Pintrich, 2000) and choose strategies to achieve those goals will self-monitor and self-reflect on their progress toward goal completion (Stefanou et al., 2013; Zimmerman, 2000). They will also attempt to regulate peers’ behaviors, motivations and emotions because those peers form the social context that must be controlled to achieve their personal goals (Volet & Mansfield, 2006). Consequently, co-regulation and self-regulation have a significant impact on effective group work. Team members consciously reflect on how the group is functioning and on their individual performance, what has been helpful in completing tasks, and how they would continue or change.

Given regulation theory as the theoretical framework, this study examines the effect of regulatory strategies of student-led project teams, and of high- and low-performing students, as evidenced in intragroup peer evaluations. By focusing on individual team members’ appraisals of teammates’ engagement in the project, the study identifies how students co-regulated and self-regulated content learning and interpersonal challenges in the joint problem-solving space. Co-regulatory behavior is considered to be behavior that enhances group cohesiveness, such as situations where individuals can meet and communicate, either face-to-face or mediated. Other situations include taking on leadership roles, promoting group harmony and autonomy, experiencing joint hardship or a common threat, cooperating to achieve common goals, and generally “help[ing] one another because they care about one another and want one another to succeed” (Slavin, 1996, p. 46). This form of regulation is evidenced by the use of “we.” Self-regulatory behavior is demonstrated in situations where success in achieving personal, academic, and professional goals drives team members’ actions and behavior.

The current emphasis on helping students become effective contributors to self-managed teams, in other words, helping students regulate teamwork, is also reinforced by research into student-controlled behavioral factors that contribute to higher team performance, interpersonal skills development, and member satisfaction (Neu, 2012). Thus the current study complements this work by investigating the manner in which students themselves regulate the content space and the relational space of teamwork and collaborative learning. Because efficient collaboration strategies are difficult to observe when projects are completed outside the classroom without direct teacher supervision, this study extends current knowledge of collaborative learning in student-led project teams outside the classroom. Understanding how and why some teams work together productively and autonomously to resolve challenges while others are less successful is crucial for developing team skills, for content learning, and for preparing business and management students for future team-based work environments.

Study Parameters

Participants

The participants were 39 undergraduate students from a large research-intensive French-speaking university in Canada. Students’ backgrounds varied, with 20% males and 80% females, little or no work experience to full-time employment, and four international students. The majority were aged 19 to 24. All students were enrolled in a communications class and participated in a mandatory team project (self-selected membership) to be completed outside class as part of the course grade. Nine teams were made up of four students; one team had three students. Two teams were dropped from the study. Although these teams were composed of three or four students at the start of the project, two students from one team subsequently dropped the course and a mature student working full-time received permission to complete an independent study. Therefore, to avoid skewing the results due to evolving group dynamics, the two groups were discarded. All students were bilingual; 77% were trilingual. In this context, speaking a language other than one of Canada’s two official languages is often indicative of ethnic origin and not a language learned at school. This is normal for this demographic as the city where the study took place has more allophones¹ than Francophones and boasts the highest number of trilingual speakers in North America (Maguire, 2010). French was the first language of 64% of the students, Spanish 13%, Arab 5%, while Creole, Canadian English, Khmer, Norwegian, Sinhala, Swedish, and Vietnamese accounted for the remaining 18%. English was the second language of 74% of the students, with French coming second at 20%, German 4%, and Fula 2%. Of the trilingual students, 25% spoke German as a third language, 20% spoke English, 15% French, 15% Spanish, while Gujarati, Italian, Japanese, Mandarin, and Russian made up the remaining 25% of third languages.

Procedure

The students formed teams the third week of term. Eight multilingual teams consisted of team members who spoke three to five different first and second languages. With the inclusion of third languages spoken, all teams were multilingual. Each team chose one topic from a list of topics related to the course content. Topics included communication strategies in plurilingual societies, effective workplace discourse, and linguistic and/or cultural competency for business relations. In addition, the students were asked to consider the nature and role of social interaction for learning (Vygotsky, 1978). As a class, they discussed how interaction enhances content acquisition, promotes information exchange, and provides collaborative ways of scaffolding learning by receiving task-related help and feedback from teammates. Students worked collaboratively in their teams for approximately 5 to 6 weeks. They identified resources; established their own goals, time lines and strategies; synthesized information; and reached consensus on a proposed solution. The deliverables were a 20-minute oral presentation and a written report. Teams did not sign contracts providing them with mechanisms to address inequities or to fire unproductive members. This reflects the expectation that students will learn how to manage team member diversity, use more regulatory strategies to sort out problems and reduce free riding, and develop skills for working in socially challenging teams if they are not allowed to penalize team members (Bacon, 2005; Volet & Mansfield, 2006).

Measures

Data were gathered from multiple sources, including documents, a questionnaire, and artifacts. Since peer evaluation has been found to improve student reaction to group work and reduce social loafing (Dyrud, 2001; Kriflik & Mullan, 2007), students were required to assess all team members’ participation and contribution using a Team Co-Evaluation form (see the appendix), which they submitted online to the course Moodle or as hard copy directly to the instructor. The form required students to rate each team member, including self, on a 4-point scale for each behavior category with ratings from 4 (very good) to 1 (needs work), resulting in a maximum score of 32 points. Students submitted their Team Co-Evaluation forms, including a critical analysis and justification of the points assigned to team members, immediately following their presentation. The course instructor kept the evaluations confidential from other team members and the class. The instructor then used the average evaluation scores given to each team member to adjust student grades on the project. Student grades were also adjusted if the student failed to include a written justification for the points assigned or failed to submit the team assessment form. The Team Co-Evaluation counted for 5% of the course grade.

The written justifications provided evidence of team members’ behavior and accountability in terms of the co-evaluation scores. In addition, since the evaluations corresponded to team members’ assessment of a teammate’s overall performance regarding responsibility, communication, and contribution on the team project, the averaged team evaluation score for each team member can be considered an indicator of whether a team member is a high team performer or a low team performer (Davison et al., 2014). The average intragroup team member scores served therefore as criteria in the current study to determine whether a team member was a high team performer (HTP) or a low team performer (LTP). Seven teams had one HTP; three teams had two members tied for HTP. All teams had one LTP. The remaining team members were mid team performers. Thus team members more easily discriminated their group’s LTP. Thirty-one usable documents were received. Four students did not submit a co-evaluation. Three of these were LTPs as indicated by their teammates’ averaged scores of their performance. Two peer evaluations did not provide any written justification, and two others only trite phrases.

For the purposes of this study, a group was considered to be a high-performing team (HPT) if the final grade on the combined oral presentation and written report averaged 80% or higher. A low-performing team (LPT) received an average of 79% or lower on the project. Thus four teams were classed as high-performing and six as low-performing.

On completion of the oral presentations and submission of the final written report, students responded to a short online survey that provided information on task organization, communication protocols, the number of face-to-face team meetings versus virtual meetings, the cause of conflicts and conflict management, team members’ roles with regard to other members, engagement and collaboration, team building, and establishing trust. Four questions were Likert-type scale ratings, four allowed students to choose multiple responses, two required students to choose a single answer, and the final question was open-ended. Twenty-two students anonymously answered the survey for a 56% response rate. Fifty percent of the respondents were first-year students, 22% were fourth year, and 14% each were second and third year students. The survey instrument is in French and is available on request from the author.

Coding System

The qualitative data from the students’ co-evaluations were analyzed through thematic analysis (Miles & Huberman, 1994) based on the target concepts. The coding system distinguished discourse dealing directly with social regulation and learning content based on the three categories of co-regulation (other and self in cooperation), regulation of others, and self-regulation identified in the conceptual framework. These predetermined categories were used for identifying students’ regulation strategies of learning, performance, social, and well-being goals along with perceptions of various aspects of the teamwork context in terms of team members and project organization. Performance goals referred to level of achievement and social goals to quality of interpersonal relations. The second step involved a contextual analysis of students’ co-evaluations to connect target concepts to HPTs and LPTs and HTPs and LTPs. Social regulation and content processing could refer to engagement in elaborating, interpreting, providing new ideas or building on ideas, explaining in one’s own words, or helping others understand. Lack of regulatory strategies was manifest when students referred to disengagement or to inability to explain, interpret, or ask for help to understand. Co-regulation represented accounts in which two or more team members made contributions to content learning or social regulation. Individual regulation represented statements where one student self-identified as making contributions. The author completed the coding, although the results are less reliable than comparing notes with another rater. However, quantitative data from the questionnaire were used for data triangulation to strengthen the congruent validity of the findings in terms of learning goal achievement and interpersonal relations.

Data Illustrations

Examples of each category, taken from the peer evaluations, are presented below and described in terms of the theoretical framework of co-regulation as a group, individual regulation of others within a group, and self-regulation. Statements coded as co-regulation as a group were identified when students spoke as “we.” These statements related to both content learning and social regulation. As the first two excerpts below illustrate, both HTPs and LTPs in an LPT identified strategies to enhance other team members’ work. The third example illustrates difficulties regulating team interaction and transactional issues.

LPT5/HTP: Each one also advised the other group members and we mutually critiqued our work to obtain a quality result.²

LPT5/LTP: The work was really done as a group and all decisions were made together. . . . when opinions diverged, we were able to make compromises. In addition, although we each had our own part to do, we still helped each other.

LPT8/HTP: The preparation of our presentation was done for the most part by e-mail although the requests by myself and [team member] to meet several times throughout the term. That is too bad since I think that we will [sic] have been capable of doing even better if we had met at least 2 or 3 times—especially to practice and time.

Statements coded as individual regulation of others within a group described students taking on leadership responsibilities to guide teammates and organize the project as indicated by this mid team performer in an HPT.

HPT9: I consider that I was very involved in this project and helped my teammates to give a content and structure to the presentation as well as to their respective sections—they trusted me all the while looking to understand and flesh out my interventions and proposals.

Finally, statements coded as self-regulation referred to students regulating their behavior to complete tasks and thus attain academic and personal goals.

HPT6/HTP: I was actively involved, I was responsible during tasks and my assigned parts and I sent them on time. I assured myself to advance and to revise and to improve the parts of the project. I contributed to preparing the visual support for the presentation and I took the initiative to do the part that was not yet assigned.

Co-Regulation and Self-Regulation Analyses

Co-Regulation as a Group

This form of regulation—co-regulation of others’ behavior in cooperation—described teamwork skills such as sharing research information and discussing and critiquing each other’s parts. As one mid team performer in an HPT stated, “We presented our material to each other, our readings, from the beginning, and we asked for comments on our part of the presentation” (HPT9). As shown in Figure 1, the majority of survey responses indicate that teammates exceeded peer expectations with regard to research and sharing information, presenting individual parts, and preparing the visual presentation. While 50% of the responses show that teammates exceeded peer expectations when it came to equal contribution to the project, another 50% indicate that teammates fell short of expectations when it came to advising or giving constructive criticism on other parts of the project. The values total more than 100% as students were allowed to select multiple answers.

Figure 1.

Expectations of team members’ contribution.

Concerning task organization, the survey results reveal that 9 of the 10 teams divided the project into individual parts on which team members worked independently and that were later compiled in the final presentation. The peer evaluations corroborate this finding. Only one team member stated, “We decided to work together, to put all our ideas together and to prepare this presentation as being a team task for which we were all responsible, rather than as a whole formed by individual and independent parts” (HPT7/LTP). Moreover, only half met face-to-face to compile the information and prepare the presentation. HTPs in LPTs often cited lack of meetings, not attending meetings, and missing deadlines as sources of tension, frustration, and lack of trust. The peer evaluations indicated that five groups had difficulties with team members missing deadlines, five groups with absenteeism, and two with members arriving late at meetings or not answering e-mails.

LPT11/HTP: Unfortunately, she didn’t participate a lot in elaborating the work. She did not do any significant research and missed some team meetings or was always late. As for the division of tasks, she did not respect deadlines, which made us late, and created tensions in the team. We had the impression that we couldn’t count on her.

A recurring regulatory strategy was to engage in compensatory work when one or more team member(s) failed to work productively or attend meetings. Often HTPs in LPTs collaborated to finalize the project and thus achieve personal and academic goals.

LPT11/HTPa: We were the two in the team who took the most initiative concerning the broad guidelines of the project. I would also say that we both put a lot more time and effort throughout the conceptualization stages of the work. We listened to the two other members’ proposals, but they had no new ideas to add. [We] were equally concerned with detail and wanted the project to be successful.

LPT11/HTPb: I helped . . . correct the PowerPoint, assemble the PowerPoint. Together we separated the work in sections since the two other team members were not present at the meeting planned for that.

Compensating behavior was also the result of a team member’s inability to work autonomously. Behavioral strategies such as micromanaging and direct confrontation were prevalent in these accounts. Ultimately, members of HPTs and HTPs would rather do more work than be penalized with a low mark for a substandard presentation.

HPT9: [. . .] was systematically absent, and we had to formulate a topic for her and provide her with articles. Her first try had to be completely redone because she had worked precisely on the topic dealt with by . . ., even though the distribution of tasks had been clearly mentioned orally and by e-mail. However, she took the criticism well and went back to work uncomplainingly, but we still had to hold her by the hand to reach a satisfying result. Thus, it seems evident to me that [the other two team members] and I had taken the success of this project to heart, and it is too bad that it was not also the case with . . ., who stood out as well by her absence at other team presentations.

LPT12/HTP: Finally, [we] had to find him sources and adapt his part so that the work was presentable. . . . It was necessary to speak to him seriously to get him to start working. He relied entirely on us for everything, therefore had absolutely no autonomy.

In multilingual groups, native speaker (NS) team members regulated language difficulties by encouraging nonnative speakers (NNSs) to participate and by correcting language errors.

LPT11/HTP: He stayed mostly silent during the team meetings. We had to ask for his opinion.

LPT11: [. . .] my teammates helped me with language errors in my presentation.

Individual Regulation of Others Within a Group

Concerning leadership, project management, and decision making, 50% of the survey respondents indicated their team made decisions together, 20% that several team members took the initiative to direct the team, and 20% that a member directed or guided others in completing tasks. Ten percent indicated that one team member in particular took the initiative or stood out as group leader. On the peer evaluations, individual students described acting as “mediator” between peers and helping teammates with research to regulate both project organization and teammates’ learning. Most students perceived individual regulation within a group as positively contributing to team building and task accomplishment.

LPT11/HTP: I believe that I made a lot of effort on the research, guiding what each person could look for, sending them interesting articles that I came across in my research. I encouraged the team members to decide on meeting dates, deadlines for submitting their part, etc.

On the other hand, some students in LPTs lacked strategies to regulate team members to promote understanding, and received little regulatory help in synthesizing their own research for the final presentation.

LPT2: [. . .] had difficulty organizing and explaining her research. Myself, I had a lot of difficulty understanding what she tried to explain and I didn’t see the link with [the topic]. . . . I had difficulty synthesizing.

Self-Regulation

Students described instances of regulating their behavior and motivations and consciously reflected on their ability to accomplish tasks that resulted in attaining their academic and personal goals. Their accounts illustrate how self-regulation is part of the dynamic interplay between personal goals, feelings, and emotions during collaborative teamwork.

LPT8/HTP: On a professional and personal level, this work enabled me to better understand the linguistic limits with which I am confronted each time I express myself in French . . . Concerning the oral presentation, I am very satisfied, because I know that each sentence I pronounced reflected a precise and well-documented idea on the topic.

The survey results presented in Figure 2 support the self-assessments. Students self-regulated by preparing the visual support, communicating clearly, improving other sections, and sharing ideas and research. Values total more than 100% as students were allowed to select multiple answers.

Figure 2.

Major self-regulatory strategies.

Concerning NNS participants, they also linked self-regulation strategies to academic and social goals, as well as to their personal well-being. One NNS in an HPT wrote of self-regulating her participation to promote her personal language learning. Some NSs regulated their speech or were more patient when an NNS participated. Another NNS in an LPT regulated his behavior to control the task situation.

HPT3: For me, it’s more important that I improve my oral French. I contributed a lot with my ideas, but it was difficult to share them effectively. Because of the language, I sometimes have problems following the discussion.

HPT3: When she started to speak a bit more slowly we worked well together. . . . She was patient if I have some problems expressing myself in French.

LPT11/HTP: [NNS] participated seriously and was involved in the work. He respected deadlines. In spite of the fact that he had difficulty speaking French well and especially, really understanding sometimes, he listened and showed willingness. . . . He was dependable.

Discussion and Lessons Learned

By matching self-regulatory and individual regulatory strategies within a group to HTPs and LTPs, the study found that HTPs used many more regulatory strategies than LTPs as well as applying a wider variety of regulatory strategies to regulate content learning and interpersonal relations, as illustrated in Table 1. The LTP results are based on evaluations provided by six LTPs. As previously mentioned, three LTPs did not submit the peer evaluation and one LTP did not justify her assessment scores.

Table 1.

Comparison of high and low team performers’ regulatory strategies.

Relationship to	High team performer	Low team performer
Content learning	• Completed assigned parts	• Worked on individual parts
	• Revised, improved, and adapted others’ work	• Worked on individual parts
	• Assured oneself to advance, revise, and improve project parts	• Worked as a group to help each other
	• Initiative to complete part not yet assigned
	• Improved understanding of course concepts
	• Research a significant contribution to project
	• Personal interest
	• Advised each other and mutually critiqued work
	• Took initiative for conceptualization stages of project
	• Concerned with detail
	• Found sources and guided other team members
Interpersonal relations	• Contributed to preparation of visual support	• All decisions made together, compromised
	• Met deadlines	• All decisions made together, compromised
	• Met deadlines	• Listened to teammates
	• Encouraged nonnative speakers to participate
	• Direct confrontation
	• Took charge of or directed team or team members
	• Coordinated meeting dates and deadlines

For HPTs and HTPs, regulatory strategies often reflected personal, academic, or professional goals, in other words, the drive to learn and understand the project content for a successful outcome. The highly involved students were able to self-regulate in addition to regulating nonproductive team members because they perceived that rewards such as success in goal achievement depend on adequate collaboration mechanisms. Consequently, they exchanged ideas, provided task-related help, clarified content, exchanged needed resources, provided constructive feedback, and took on leadership roles. Like Neu (2012), we found that some team members proactively assumed responsibility for additional tasks. In addition, they promoted harmony through mediation, enhanced group cohesiveness by respecting project management procedures and communication protocols, mentored peers, and encouraged NNS participation. On the other hand, LTPs lacked regulatory strategies to clearly explain their research and its purpose, to ask for clarification to ensure that they understood key points, to provide constructive criticism, and to distill their research into a clear, concise presentation.

Lessons Learned: 1

The fact that HTPs produced high-quality work attests to the efficacy of their regulatory strategies and suggests that instructors should take practical steps to develop students’ regulatory strategies in student-led, multilingual project teams. Instructors could have students define group processes and procedures, brainstorm collaborative strategies in class, and negotiate ground rules for participation and minimum standards of engagement. Prichard, Stratford, and Bizo (2006) found that teams that were trained to adopt strategies, plan, manage time, and contribute equally received the highest scores. Furthermore, these discussions may engage those who are reluctant to invest in the team learning process. Instructors could also suggest or even require a minimum number of meetings for teams over the course of the project, since meeting frequency has been found to be a major contributor to team effectiveness (Lizzio & Wilson, 2006).

Social loafing was a major problem for 7 of the 10 teams participating in this study. One of the main causes of social loafing was transaction cost problems (McCorkle, et al., 1999), which resulted from failure to interact in collaborative activities, attend meetings, meet deadlines, and respond to emails. While adhering to communication protocols has a practical function in that work gets done more efficiently and effectively, it also has a symbolic function in that members show they value the group and each other (Lizzio & Wilson, 2006). In marketing terms, this is personal branding. The surest way to betray one’s personal brand, or reputation index, is to systematically arrive late or not at all, or to be unprepared for team discussions thereby making others think that one is disrespectful or motivated only by self-interest. The importance of quantifying reputational capital to operate successfully in the new global economy led Cravens, Oliver, and Ramamoorti (2003) to develop a reputation index for measuring and managing intangibles that contribute to corporate reputation. One key component of the index is employees because employees deal with customers, potential customers, suppliers, and competitors and must “be made aware of the dangers associated with a negative reputation” (Cravens & Oliver, 2006, p. 301).

Lessons Learned: 2

Since students, employees, and employers perceive that there is no added value in working with a disrespectful or an incompetent colleague, students must be made to understand their role in and the importance of acquiring and maintaining a good reputation. Furthermore, if they do not pull their weight while working in teams, their lack of professionalism reflects on how others perceive how they will work in the future. Zinko et al. (2012) analyzed antecedents and consequences of workplace personal reputation and found that time, human capital, and social control and competency contributed to personal reputation. They also demonstrated that the consequences of positive personal reputation relate to autonomy, power, and career success, and that these positive outcomes reduce uncertainty about an individual’s future behavior. Consequently, many human resources decisions related to career success, such as hiring, promotion, and salary, are affected by personal reputation. In the workplace, free riders will be branded and will not be awarded opportunities for growth in their careers. Free riders may ultimately be reprimanded by supervisors and peers, and eventually fired. In both the workplace and educational settings, teamwork builds reputation and social capital among team members, which can be leveraged later for further opportunities or promotions (Bacon, 2005). In addition, instructors must explain that social loafing reflects on both the student’s reputation and on the reputation of the whole team. Accordingly, attending meetings, arriving on time, and respecting deadlines contribute to team members’ positive branding. Agreeing on meeting protocols from the outset would undoubtedly be beneficial to group management.

Another cause of social loafing was specialization of labor, which minimized group interaction and prevented integrative learning. In the initial planning and organization stages, almost all teams divided up the tasks so that most of the work was done independently. Students were unable to clearly explain their part to other team members, who, in turn, lacked the ability to ask for clarification. Thus they failed to learn as a group or to learn from each other to understand other parts of the project.

Lessons Learned: 3

In future student-managed project teams, we plan to use team-building and integrative learning interventions in the formative stage to develop team cohesion and promote regulation strategies. Teams could work on short, in-class exercises and activities and then report back to the class, thereby ensuring accountability to teammates. We can foster collaborative engagement by assigning projects that cannot be easily divided up into individual tasks. By giving each student a piece of the puzzle, students realise that they need to share information and ideas with their team members, that team members are important resources for task accomplishment, and that group interaction is necessary for successful outcomes. Instructors could also demonstrate the use of higher order co-regulation strategies such as how to articulate thought-provoking questions and clear explanations for maximum comprehension and knowledge sharing. Finally, instructors must make students aware that the team members who do the majority of the work learn the most and that specialization of labor means that team members have little understanding of the project and what their colleagues have done.

Social loafing was also related to collective action problems. Due to diminishing returns, collective action problems arose when each member’s contribution to the final presentation was smaller as a percentage of the combined effort (McCorkle, et al., 1999). Consequently, we noticed more free riding during the final stage when team members were preparing the visual support for the presentation. Students with lower goals may have decided that additional work was not worthwhile or they may have assessed opportunity costs and made trade-offs between classes toward the end of term. They then shifted responsibilities to the member(s) with the highest goals. In this situation, some teams considered the problem a team problem rather than an individual problem and co-regulated as a group or took turns co-regulating, rather than confronting and penalizing team members, and had better project grades. However, we noticed a “tipping point” during the project when two potentially HPTs failed to confront team members about issues such as social loafing and lack of autonomy, and became LPTs. In these cases, on the day of the scheduled presentation, either the LTPs had nothing prepared, or they finally submitted their part of the presentation. Of course, this happened too late in the project for members to reactively compensate.

Lessons Learned: 4

Although students with multiple goals perceived the project in terms of performance and learning and regulated team members and themselves to further learning, some teams were reluctant to regulate others and instead placed others’ social well-being goals ahead of the team learning goals. Because students chose friends as teammates, reluctance to regulate others could be related to a friendship effect. To overcome the friendship effect in future team projects, we plan to establish teams based on a resource wealth distribution model rather than self-selection. Also, when regulatory strategies fail to modify team members’ behavior, teams must be encouraged to meet with instructors to explain what steps have been taken and to decide on a plan to resolve the free riding problem. A student–instructor meeting may also help distinguish free riders from those who are struggling.

Furthermore, strategies to improve collaborative processes in student-managed teams must be implemented in conjunction with appropriate assessment processes. Mid-project reviews and end-of-project team peer assessments may reduce social loafing and force students to take responsibility for their actions. The grade for each team member could be based on a weighting system or a formula integrating self- and peer assessments so that the final grade reflects individual work, group work, or a combination, and should be decided on and discussed with the students before starting the project. Multiple assessments throughout the project could also be used to assess team effectiveness. These could be in the form of group progress reports and updates turned in during the project. Progress reports are a form of regulation requiring students to reflect on the effectiveness of their group and future plans for completing the project. Progress reports may be used to formalize meetings and help students concentrate by reporting on what each team member accomplished and outlining the tasks to be completed the following week. Procedural e-mail messages copied to the instructor can be used to communicate progress, plans, and decisions.

Finally, our findings do not support Hall and Buzwell (2012), who suggest that free riding may be related to a students’ first language being other than the language of instruction. In our study, the first language of all free riders was the language of instruction. In fact, of the students whose first language was not the language of instruction, four were HTPs and nine were mid team performers. Furthermore, we found that NNSs were willing and dependable while some NSs were untrustworthy and created tensions within the team. Also, NNSs self-regulated to speak up during team meetings and to cooperate in team decisions, while NSs self-regulated their speech to increase NNS comprehension and develop language skills. NSs also regulated NNSs by encouraging their participation. In our multilingual context, NSs were tolerant of mistakes and willing to help NNSs. They regulated peers’ behavior to reflect concern for peers’ learning as well as for a successful project outcome. Thus, we found that teams in which members adjusted their speech to accommodate those who were not fluent in the language of instruction, or teams in which NNSs made a special effort to express themselves in the language of instruction, were more likely to have less social loafing and better project grades. Students’ engagement in regulating teammates highlights the social nature of learning (Vygotsky, 1978). Still, we found that NNSs sometimes felt timid or inhibited by their lack of language skills and realized they could have spoken up more to express their ideas or to elicit ideas from teammates. Nevertheless, the study revealed that the major factors contributing to lower project grades were related to deadlines, communication protocols, and social loafing rather than to linguistic ability.

Lessons Learned: 5

When establishing teams, instructors must discuss students’ concerns about working in multicultural teams and with team members whose first language is other than the language of instruction. Instructors must reinforce the value of cultural diversity and different perspectives that NNSs can bring to team-based projects. As our study revealed, NNSs are motivated and want to enhance and contribute to team learning. In most cases, they simply need encouragement from NSs to participate fully. Therefore, we must remind NSs to be tolerant of those who are not at ease in the language and to include NNSs in all discussions and decision making. Conversely, NNSs must be encouraged to speak up, and reassured that their opinions are valued and respected.

Conclusion

The study found that HPTs and team members used a variety of co-regulatory and self-regulatory strategies to monitor task completion and reach a successful outcome. In particular, HTPs used a wider range of strategies than LTPs when regulating both content-related learning processes and interpersonal relations. Furthermore, students who establish academic, personal, and professional learning goals are more likely to engage in regulatory strategies in student-managed project teams. Therefore instructors must train students to realize the benefits accrued through exchanging ideas; supporting each other’s learning process, particularly when working with NNS; offering constructive criticism; and managing interpersonal dynamics. During the formative stage of self-managed project teams, instructors must insist on the importance of the effective use of regulatory strategies such as sharing material and critiquing team members’ work to reduce specialization of labor and enhance team performance. Team assignments and a more comprehensive understanding of their consequences on students in terms of cognition, behavior, and team skills development must be reinforced.

A limitation of this study is that the design does not allow us to determine whether regulatory strategies were influential in students’ perceptions of the effectiveness of their learning groups in relation to their performance, for the simple reason that most students were satisfied with the final result. When collaborative processes broke down, the highly motivated team members offset deficiencies through compensatory work. Future research could establish the level of congruence between measures of regulation and performance. It is uncertain whether co-regulation led to greater academic performance or whether higher performing teams had already developed interactional styles that emphasized co-regulation. Future studies could explore the possibility that students with a social-constructivist view of learning see the value of learning together, instead of just working together to accomplish a task, and for that reason engage in more co-regulatory activities.

Footnotes

Appendix

Acknowledgements

The insightful comments on earlier drafts from Kathy Lund Dean, Mary Ann Hazen, and two anonymous reviewers are gratefully appreciated.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

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