Operationalizing team commitment in a project-based learning environment

Commitment is a multi-dimensional construct that has been extensively researched in the context of organizations. Organizational and professional commitment have been positively associated with technical performance, client service, attention to detail, and degree of involvement with one’s job. However, there is a relative dearth of research in terms of team commitment, especially in educational settings. Teamwork is considered a 21stcentury skill and higher education institutions are focusing on helping students to develop teamwork skills by applied projects in the coursework. But studies have demonstrated that creating a team is not enough to help students build teamwork skills. Literature supports the use of team contracts to bolster commitment, among team members. However, the relationship between team contracts and team commitment has not been formally operationalized.This research category study presents a mixed-methods approach towards characterizing and operationalizing team commitment exhibited by students enrolled in a sophomore-level systems analysis and design course by analyzing team contracts and team retrospective reflections. The course covers concepts pertaining to information systems development and includes a semester-long team project where the students work together in four or five member teams to develop the project deliverables. The students have prior software development experiences through an introductory systems development course as well as multiple programming courses. The data for this study was collected through the team contracts signed by students belonging to one of the 23 teams of this course. The study aims to answer the following research question: How can team commitment be characterized in a sophomore-level system analysis and design course among the student teams?A rubric was developed to quantify the team commitment levels of students based on their responses on the team contracts. Students were classified as high or low commitment based on the rubric scores. The emergent themes of high and low commitment teams were also presented. The results indicated that the high commitment teams were focused on setting goals, effective communication, and having mechanisms in place for timely feedback and improvement. On the other hand, low commitment teams did not articulate the goals of the project, they demonstrated a lack of dedication for attending team meetings regularly, working as a team, and had a lack of proper coordination while working together.

I. Introduction

Commitment is a construct that features several dimensions and is often classified along the lines of organizational commitment, professional commitment, and team commitment. [1]–[3]. Organizational and professional commitment has been extensively researched [3]. Organizational commitment is characterized as the extent of an employee’s involvement in an organization and the strength of their identification with the same organization. It has been positively associated with the employee retention [4]. Commitment is an important aspect of teamwork. Team commitment is an intrinsic inclination of a team member toward their team [5]. Team Commitment has also been identified as one of the important scrum values. The concept of commitment has been studied widely in an organizational setting, but very few studies have been conducted in a higher education setting [6], [7]. Thus, this study intends to characterize the team commitment in sophomore-level system analysis and design course. The course follows a cooperative project-based learning approach. Student teams are trained on scrum principles, and they follow the scrum approach throughout the semester. The students must complete a semi-capstone project and deliver a prototype as the final course deliverable. Accordingly, the research question for this study is: How can team commitment be characterized in a sophomore-level system analysis and design course among the student teams? The manuscript is structured as follows: i) Section II discussed the literature pertaining to project-based learning and team commitment; ii) Section III detailed the characteristics of the participants, data collection and analysis methods adopted; iii) Section IV provided the quantitative and qualitative results of the study; iv) Section V discussed the results in the context of literature, and v) Section VI concluded the manuscript while also detailing the limitations and future avenues of inquiry.