Forming Teams

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October 12, 2018

"Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships." --Michael Jordan

While best known for “team based learning,” Larry Michaelsen offers suggestions for forming effective teams that can work with a range of classes and instructional styles. Michaelsen suggests

  • Limiting groups to 4 to 7 members (enough human energy to complete tasks, but less room for slacking).
  • Making the groups permanent for the semester (an opportunity for students to work out their problems).
  • Forming groups of students who don’t know each other well (a way to avoid existing conflicts and to give students an opportunity to meet new people).
  • Distributing resources evenly among the groups.
  • Forming the groups yourself instead of leaving it to students.


Let’s look at the last two of Michaelsen’s suggestions a little more closely.

When Michaelsen talks about dividing resources evenly, he advocates making sure the assets students bring to the course are divided evenly among the groups. For example, instructors might create teams with a mixture of majors/nonmajors, local/international students, high GPA/low GPA, student athletes, and first year students. Individual students may fall into more than one group, but there’s no need to make things complicated; just spread different characteristics among the groups.

Clearly, groups that are shaped in these ways need to be formed by the instructor. Michaelsen suggests lining students up—either literally in the classroom or on paper—according to a key attribute they would bring to a group. For example, in an finance class required of all business majors I would have accounting and finance students stand up first, then students who are fluent in more than one language, next student athletes, then first year students, etc. until everyone is in a line. Students then count off so the various attributes are more or less evenly distributed among the groups. This process may sound complicated, but this five-minute video illustrates its simplicity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRNpaA8pU_0&feature=youtu.be

Want to read more?

Michaelsen, L. K. (2005). Team-based learning: A transformative use of small groups in college teaching. Sterling, VA: Stylus.

Oakley, B., Brent, B., Felder, R.M. & Elhaji, I. (2004) Turning student groups into effective teams. Journal of Student Centered Learning 2(1), 9-23.

Written by:
Tim Griesdorn
Department of Finance, University of the Incarnate Word

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