STLI Fellows for Excellence in Teaching

2025 – 2026 Fellows

Alexandra Joosse  /  Public Policy

Beyond the Grade: Building Career Readiness and Digital Integrity through Team Projects

Teamwork has a bad reputation in the classroom. Among the most common complaints by students and faculty alike are that it allows and even encourages an uneven distribution of work/learning and that it leads to interpersonal conflict. After five years of using teamwork in my introductory course, I now see teamwork as a solution to many of the challenges we see in this generation of students, including feelings of isolation and inability (or lack of willingness) to resolve conflict. Simply assigning team projects is not enough to combat these challenges, though. Using a modified version of the Scrum framework, I focus on guiding students through how to communicate well, how to resolve conflict with team members, and how to both give and take constructive feedback. All these skills translate directly into future careers.