Teamwork and learning styles in higher education

Abstract

The instructional design for training and assessment in teamwork competency must take into account the factors that influence and improve the efficiency of teams. The Inputs-Mediators-Outputs model, widely used in the context of organizations, conceptualizes these factors into three phases. The first, Inputs, considers the input aspects that can affect the team functioning and, in particular, describes the value of heterogeneity in team members as a variable that improves the effectiveness of certain types of teams. This paper presents a research carried out in Higher Education, with an experimental group composed by teams with members heterogeneous in their preferential learning styles and a control group with random composed teams. It aims at contrasting the influence of the different composition with academic performance. The results obtained show that there are not significant differences in student grades between experimental and control groups, although there was a substantial increase in the number of students who stayed in the subjects during the academic year in which the research was conducted, in comparison with the three prior years. Moreover, they show also that the coordinator role is related to the active learning style. This result seems to point out the interest of deepening into the investigation line, by testing other learning style combinations.