Team Charters: Foundations for Effective Collaboration

Introduction

Career readiness is quickly becoming a central goal of higher education (Miller, 2024). While a degree is often the minimum requirement for an entry-level position in a professional career, it is no longer sufficient to ensure employment after graduation. Employers now expect applicants to possess a variety of interpersonal skills, chiefly problem-solving, communication, teamwork, adaptability, and a willingness to learn new things (Tushar & Sooraksa, 2023). Yet there seems to be a disconnect between the competencies employers expect graduates to demonstrate and the way students are taught to collaborate in classroom settings.

One area of disconnection appears to be the ability to work together in diverse teams. While employers highly value this skill, many students don’t understand how to successfully participate in a group without instruction (Hansen, 2006; Weimer, 2014; Tushar & Sooraksa, 2023). To bridge this gap, instructors often assign group work (Weimer, 2024). While students are expected to collaborate on projects, they often lack the planning skills, cultural competencies, and communication proficiencies necessary to make group work effective in academic and professional settings (Feuer & Wolfe, 2023). Rather than viewing this issue as a student deficit, instructors might conceptualize it as a design challenge in terms of how students are taught to clarify expectations, demonstrate accountability, and problem solve. One way instructors might approach this predicament is to incorporate team charters into group projects. As Andrade et al. (2023) note, team charters provide necessary structure by outlining the roles, duties, and responsibilities of the group. This post will provide a roadmap for developing effective team charters and provide guidance for avoiding common pitfalls.

What Is a Team Charter? Key Components for Strong Teams

In its most basic sense, a team charter is a document written by and for students to help them successfully complete a group project. It articulates the following aspects of how the team will function:

Shared Goals and Purpose

• A team charter may include a mission or purpose statement that explains the team’s goals for the project and clarifies how success will be defined over the course of the project. Students may also enjoy creating a logo that represents their team identity and corresponds with their mission statement (Weimer, 2014).

Roles and Responsibilities

• The document usually defines the duties each member of the team will be responsible for completing and whether these responsibilities are flexible. It explains how individual and collective efforts will be recorded.

Communication Norms

• Because communication norms depend on culture and context, the team charter generally delineates preferred communication channels and expected response times (Feuer & Wolfe, 2023).

Conflict Resolution

• Another purpose of a team charter is to provide a formalized code of conduct for group members. It often addresses how conflict will be resolved before it begins.

Accountability

• The team charter provides a framework for how the progress of the project will be tracked. It may also offer guidance for how to proceed if major milestones are not being met in a timely manner. Some teams may choose to add an “Opt Out” clause to their charter; if one person is derailing the group, that individual6 may choose to complete the project alone.

While the topics above are commonly outlined in team charters, it’s important to mention that not all team charters include the same components. Instructors should clearly articulate the goals and objectives of the project, so students understand what to include in their charter.

The most critical aspect of a successful team charter is its ability to align the sometimes nebulous expectations of team behavior and interaction with the practical requirements of a given project (Hillier & Dunn-Jensen, 2012).

Helping Students Design a Successful Team Charter

Planning to Succeed

Successful team charters require careful planning from instructors. Johnson and Horn (2019) suggest explaining the concept of a team charter to students on the first day of class but giving them a couple of weeks to form their own teams and to ask questions before they begin writing. This timeframe affords them the opportunity to get to know one another and understand the scope and deliverables of the project. Instructors might also consider dedicating a class session (or online learning module) to having students draft their charters. By intentionally structuring time and learning support, instructors can help teams develop strong foundations for collaboration over the course of the project.

Balancing Structure with Flexibility

There isn’t one uniform way for teams to go about creating their charters. While some instructors find distributing templates helpful (Hillier & Dunn-Jensen, 2012), Feuer and Wolfe (2023) caution against having students complete superficial templates without appropriate guidance from their instructor. Without necessary scaffolding, learners may view completing the charter as “busywork” and not refer to it after its initial completion (Hillier & Dunn-Jensen, 2012; Feuer & Wolfe, 2023). Dominant voices may also drown out more marginalized ones without intentional direction from the instructor. To support the process of creating a charter without dictating the content, instructors might consider providing the following:

• A list of recommended charter components (mission statement, duties and responsibilities chart, etiquette policy, etc.)
• Considerations for communication norms and etiquette policy
• Sample sections from a particularly effective team charter
• Discipline-specific issues to discuss as a team
• A reminder to tailor the charter specifically to the assigned project’s goals and objectives

Instructors can guide the development of effective charters by supporting team autonomy while still acting as classroom facilitators. To support this goal, they might encourage teams to review their charter periodically to assess and revise the document as the project unfolds. They might also consider requiring team members to complete a reflection on the effectiveness of their charter at midterm and the conclusion of the project.

Emphasize Accountability by Stressing Professional Practice

Students may feel more invested in the team charter as a living document if they understand its professional context. It may be helpful to share the ways professionals working in a variety of career fields rely on collaborative documents to track progress and accountability:

• Listing clear deadlines for specific parts of a project
• Cataloging the team’s meeting schedule
• Outlining consequences for missed deadlines
• Explaining official policies for addressing team concerns
• Describing the ways project management tools or other shared documents will be used

Framing the team charter as career preparation encourages students to engage thoughtfully with it as a professional resource rather than as just another academic requirement.

Additional Considerations for Successful Group Work

Productive group work requires more than assisting students in creating a team charter. Instructors must also think about how groups will be formed and graded. The following blog posts from the K. Patricia Cross Academy CrossCurrents Library address these topics:

Making Group Work Work: Strategies for Forming Effective Groups: This article offers a variety of helpful strategies for effective group formation in terms of type, size, and membership selection.

Grading Group Work: Tips and Strategies: Fairly assessing group work can be difficult. This piece shares recommendations for weighing individual and group grades by evaluating process, collaboration, progress, and product.

Helpful Group Work Teaching Techniques

The K. Patricia Cross Academy teaching technique videos below show ways collaborative learning might work in practice. Group charters complement such teaching techniques by establishing the conditions that make them most effective.

Test-Taking Teams [2:12]

• In Test-Taking Teams, students work in groups to prepare for a test. They then take the test, first individually and next as a group.

Jigsaw [2:17]

• In Jigsaw, students work in small groups to develop knowledge about a given topic before teaching what they have learned to another group.

Conclusion

Group work can be challenging for both instructors and students. However, the issues that come along with collaborative learning need not discourage instructors from leveraging its potential to address real world problems through the development of practical skills valued in the workforce.

With diligent planning and strong communication, instructors can provide the direction learners need to engage meaningfully with the team charter they create.

While incorporating team charters into group work doesn’t ensure successful group dynamics, these documents offer a blueprint for students to work from as they navigate how to work together as a team (Weimer, 2015).