5 Best Practices for Running Team Projects

Letting students self-select into teams feels democratic, but it often produces homogeneous groups that reinforce existing social networks rather than building new connections. Research by Oakley et al. (2004) suggests that instructor-formed teams, when composed with attention to diversity of skills and perspectives, outperform self-selected teams on most measures.

When forming teams, consider mixing students by major, experience level, and working style. Avoid isolating underrepresented students — ensure that no one is the sole representative of their demographic group on a team. Teams of four to five members tend to work best for most projects, large enough for meaningful collaboration but small enough for individual accountability.

We wouldn't expect students to write well without instruction in writing, yet we routinely expect them to collaborate well without any instruction in collaboration. Effective team projects include explicit teaching of teamwork skills: how to set agendas, manage conflict, give and receive feedback, and divide work equitably.

This doesn't require dedicating entire class sessions to teamwork instruction. Brief interventions — a five-minute discussion of effective meeting practices, a handout on giving constructive feedback, a short reflection exercise after each team milestone — can significantly improve team functioning. The key is making teamwork skills a visible, valued part of the course rather than an assumed background competency.

The biggest predictor of team project failure is procrastination. When the only deadline is the final deliverable, teams inevitably postpone difficult decisions and uneven work distribution until it's too late to course-correct. Intermediate milestones — a project proposal, a progress report, a draft presentation — create natural check-in points that keep teams on track.

Milestones also provide opportunities for formative peer evaluation. When students evaluate their teammates at the midpoint of a project, they can identify and address problems (free riding, poor communication, unclear roles) before those problems affect the final product. This formative feedback is often more valuable than the summative evaluation at the end.

Peer evaluation serves two purposes in team projects: it provides accountability for individual contributions, and it generates feedback that helps students develop their collaboration skills. But these benefits only materialize when the evaluation process is well-designed.

Effective peer evaluation uses behavioral questions that ask about specific, observable actions rather than general impressions. It includes self-assessment alongside peer assessment to promote reflection. And it's administered anonymously to encourage honest feedback. Platforms like CoStudy are designed to handle these design requirements automatically, making it easy for professors to implement research-backed peer evaluation without having to become assessment design experts.

The most overlooked phase of a team project is the debrief. After the final deliverable is submitted and the grades are assigned, most courses move on immediately to the next topic. This misses a critical learning opportunity.

A structured debrief — whether conducted as a class discussion, a written reflection, or a team retrospective — helps students consolidate what they've learned about collaboration. What worked well? What would they do differently? How will they apply these lessons to future teamwork?

The debrief is also a natural time to share aggregated peer evaluation results. When students can see how their self-assessments compare to their peer assessments, they gain insight into blind spots that are difficult to identify any other way. This comparison, framed as a developmental exercise rather than a judgment, is one of the most powerful tools professors have for teaching self-awareness and interpersonal effectiveness.