Voluntary or forced assignment to work groups in university students: effects on team roles

Abstract

[EN]The productivity of future professionals is usually conditioned by their ability to work in groups. Therefore, the EHEA has promoted various forms of teaching methodologies that require group activities by the university student. However, the consequences of a voluntary or forced assignment of students to such activities are still not well known. In addition to the type of assignment to the group, various variables intervene conditioning the proper functioning and didactic effectiveness of these activities. These variables can be of individual or collective type. The variables of individual type used in this study are: peer attachment, characterized by the person's way of bonding (Bowlby, 1969; Leiter, Day and Price, 2015); the expectation of self-efficacy, considered as confidence in one's ability to achieve the intended results (Ormrod, 2006); and the attitude toward collaborative learning, understood as the attitude towards working in small groups based on participation and positive interdependence. The collective variables selected are the team roles that make up the different work groups (Belbin, 2015). Each student can play several roles depending on the needs of the team and, also, according to their own interests. A team role is the commitment that the individual acquires to perform a certain function, adjusting their skills to the needs of the team. OBJETIVE Analyze the relationships between attachment, self-efficacy, attitude toward collaborative learning and team role, as well as the effect of voluntary or random training of work groups on team roles.