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Career preparedness is critical to successfully transitioning from college to a full-time work environment. Being prepared means students have the technical and non-technical skills to help an organization meet its strategic goals. In many instances, students lack the requisite career competencies and collaborative skills. This study proposes designing an instructor-led, career-driven quasi-virtual internship to address this issue and improve students’ preparedness and teamwork.

Our research integrates and expands the four-step processes outlined in instructional and course redesign theories, including analysis, design and development, implementation and evaluation. In the evaluation phase, a survey is used to collect data, and natural language processing is applied to identify the emerging themes. The sample included 104 undergraduate students enrolled in an information systems degree program, which resulted in a digital corpus of 40,744 words for analysis.

Results indicate that the implementation of instructor-led quasi-virtual internships offered a comprehensive career experience comparable to an onsite or virtual company-sponsored internship in five notable areas: (1) application of technical knowledge, (2) critical thinking, (3) time management, (4) application of IT project management and (5) collaborative skills.

Our study only evaluated participants in our treatment group. Future research should examine the differences between students who complete sponsored versus instructor-led quasi-virtual internships. Researchers can add a control group of students who receive a theoretically based capstone course. Future research can simulate randomized controlled trials (RCT) (Chalmers et al., 1981) to measure the effectiveness of quasi-virtual internships. A benefit of this research is that an open-ended survey allows for collecting rich, multifaceted primary data. The second limitation is that the study included only single-item questions. Future authors can create and validate a survey instrument based on the themes and concepts emanating from our investigation. For example, they can operationalize team dynamics and career preparedness using a reflective model in which the underlying construct drives the indicators, requiring multiple items to examine each construct (Coltman et al., 2008). Third, the sample size in the study was relatively small. We can increase the sample size using a time-series dataset with multiple measurement periods. The fourth limitation is context; this study was conducted at a public university; other institutions may have varied teaching approaches, student demographics and resources. By expanding our study using a multi-site approach (Ballantyne et al., 2012), we can increase cross-sectional sample sizes and improve the generalizability of the study’s results.

This study provides several practical insights for educators by examining quasi-virtual internships. Academic institutions that want to offer internships but struggle to establish industry partners can implement the quasi-internship model as an alternative approach. The study highlights that students gain critical insight into their future careers during these internships by being familiar with industry concepts and tools. We also provide insights into engaging students in “meaningful collaboration.” We suggest the instructor provide some time during the class sessions for group work to improve coordination and introduce industry-level tools that provide a more applied approach to IS education.

The National Survey of College Internships (NSCI) 2021 indicates that underrepresented and first-generation students were less likely to participate in internships. Our research may positively impact diverse communities since the quasi-virtual internship allows all students to participate once they are enrolled in a capstone class.

To our knowledge, this study is the first to utilize latent semantic analysis to analyze students’ feedback to improve course design, career preparedness and team dynamics.

Creating an engaging, inclusive, and supportive learning environment within higher education is challenging at the best of times. When considering refugees and learners who have been displaced from their home/region country due to war, this is paramount to enable continued learning. Team-based learning (TBL) is an active learning methodology whereby the learners take ownership of their learning and work within peer teams to deepen their learning through the application of knowledge. In the context of the above setting, TBL offers a number of key advantages over traditional didactic learning approaches to better support diverse student groups and aid learner integration. This chapter explores these advantages and details how TBL is not just a method of content delivery, but an approach which can bring about increased peer support (on campus and online), an increased sense of student belongingness and community, employability skills, and so on.

This chapter contributes to the scholarship of teaching and learning in extracurricular enterprise and entrepreneurship education. It draws on research from two annual ‘Business Challenge Weeks’ (BCW) held at Oxford Brookes University in 2021 and 2022, in which teams of postgraduate students from three faculties worked on external client projects, supported by an academic mentor. It presents and discusses findings derived from a survey and interviews conducted after the second of these years. The chapter takes a transdisciplinary perspective, after Budwig and Alexander (2020), Piaget (1972) and Klein et al. (2001) and explores the relationship between this and the enterprise and entrepreneurship development pipeline set out by QAA (2018). It analyses the experiences of the three main participating groups engaged in the challenge weeks – students, external clients and academic mentors – and explores the organising challenges inherent in multiparty pedagogical initiatives. The chapter contributes to knowledge in this area by revealing and reflecting on the motivations and expectations of the three participant groups, the roles they played during the week and the outcomes they reported. It also expands understanding of transdisciplinary enterprise pedagogy.

The purpose of this study was to examine if team composition based on adaption-innovation (A-I) problem-solving styles is related to the teamwork quality and team effectiveness (TE) of student project teams participating in a [state-gifted program (SGP)].

A correlational design was conducted with a sample of 72 (SGP) participants, consisting of 15 project teams (n = 15), which formed three groups: (1) the homogeneous adaptive group, which consists of five homogeneous adaptive teams (n = 5); (2) the homogeneous innovative group, which consists of five homogeneous innovative teams (n = 5), and (3) the heterogeneous group (i.e. a mix of innovative and adaptive individuals), which consists of five heterogeneous teams (n = 5).

A one-way ANOVA and post-hoc test revealed that team composition based on problem-solving styles is related to teamwork quality and TE. Regarding TE, both homogeneous groups (i.e. all adaptive or all innovative individuals) were more effective than the heterogeneous group. However, regarding teamwork quality, only the adaptive group had significantly higher teamwork quality than the heterogeneous group.

We recommend that leadership educators utilize Kirton’s adaption-innovation inventory (KAI) as a tool for building effective student project teams. KAI can be used by leadership educators in two major ways: to assign students to groups (as done in the current study) or for team building, where team members share their KAI scores to better understand their problem-solving preferences.

The findings add to the literature by specifying the type of homogeneous groups (i.e. homogeneous adaptive), which may offer an advantage over heterogeneous groups regarding teamwork quality.

This purpose of this descriptive case study is to examine students’ experience engaging in stand-up meetings during the team project for the application development course in their Management Information Systems (MIS) program. Although the body of research on agile stand-up meetings is growing, there is little research on the experience of students who are engaging in stand-up meetings. The majority of research focuses on business professionals instead of students.

This study uses a mixed methods approach to collect data by anonymously surveying students. This exploratory study is a prelude to implementing a larger-scale investigation of student perceptions of stand-up meetings. The research was conducted using a mixed methods approach that used a survey instrument with both open-ended and closed-ended questions to gather students’ perceptions. The qualitative data was analyzed using a thematic coding approach.

The results of this study demonstrate that students’ experiences with stand-up meetings are overwhelmingly positive, with students describing how stand-up meetings helped them communicate and collaborate with their team and solve problems together as a team. The majority of students in this study reported that participating in stand-up meetings helped them overcome roadblocks.

The main limitation of this descriptive case study is the sample size, since only one section of the course was available during the spring semester for the survey. Consequently, the findings may not be broadly generalizable to other contexts. An additional limitation is that the sample was obtained from a school primarily serving nontraditional adult students from underserved groups. One other limitation of this study is that the course surveyed was a synchronous online section with a limited amount of time for class sessions.

This case study should serve as a starting point for faculty, particularly information systems faculty, who are seeking to incorporate stand-up meetings into their courses. The benefits that students cited were clear. As one student stated, stand-up “allows us to vet through our work, help build interpersonal relationships and strengthen our skills.” The larger impact and contribution of this research is that encourages faculty to adopt the practice of stand-up meetings to enhance students’ communication, collaboration and problem solving.

Incorporating stand-up meetings into coursework benefits students by fostering collaboration, communication and problem-solving. The results of this study demonstrate that students’ experiences with stand-up meetings are overwhelmingly positive, with students describing how stand-up meetings helped them communicate and collaborate with their team and solve problems together as a team. The majority of students in this study reported that participating in stand-up meetings helped them overcome roadblocks.

This descriptive case study examines students’ experience engaging in stand-up meetings during the team project for the application development course in their MIS program. Although the body of research on agile stand-up meetings is growing, there is little research on the experience of students who are engaging in stand-up meetings. The majority of research focuses on business professionals instead of students.

To support the advancement of an underrepresented category of research in the field of entrepreneurial teams, this study proposes and tests a novel empirical model that connects two team emergent states, namely team entrepreneurial passion (TEP) and transactive memory systems (TMSs), and their influence on team performance.

The data were gathered using an online questionnaire distributed to undergraduate students who had formed entrepreneurial teams as part of a course assignment. Two methods were executed on the obtained data, namely partial least-square structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) and necessary condition analysis (NCA).

The results uphold the hypothesised mediation role of TMSs between TEP and team performance. Of the two direct relations in the model, only the necessary conditions were present for the effect of TEP on TMSs.

The issue of the small sample size, a common feature in entrepreneurial team research, as discussed in the methodical section of the paper, is sidestepped with the use of PLS-SEM tools. Nonetheless, a larger sample size could have increased confidence in the results' validity. In addition, a longitudinal approach to data collection and analysis could have been used to augment that confidence further.

Three practical implications stem from the empirical findings. First, it lends support for implementing teaching approaches and task designs that are envisaged to improve team functioning in university classrooms. Making a business plan boosts students' desire to exploit the received knowledge and find a venture, so the teaching effort in entrepreneurship courses can have real-world consequences.

By testing the mediation model, new insights are made into the associations between team emerging states and, subsequently, team performance. In addition, this study responds to recent calls in the literature to incorporate NCA in an entrepreneurial setting.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of sustainability-focused, cocurricular, interdisciplinary programming for graduate students at creating future leaders in sustainability, i.e. did interdisciplinary sustainability programming further prepared graduate students in sustainability leadership beyond the scope of the individual student academic programs from the perspective of the student participants.

The objective of the study was met by evaluating the University of Michigan Dow Sustainability Fellows Program. With a decade of graduate-student participation, surveys and interviews of Fellows alumni from 2013 to 2020 were used to assess the program impact on creating sustainability leaders. Opportunities for program reflections were included through prompted open-ended questions.

A majority (88%) of the Fellows who responded to the survey agreed with the statement that their career path was positively affected by their participation in the program and that the cocurricular program provided opportunities to explore sustainability-related topics from perspectives they would not have experienced otherwise. The interdisciplinary aspect of the program and the focus on practical community sustainability projects were the most valued attributes of the cocurricular programming.

Supporting cocurricular interdisciplinary programs requires significant resources and intentionality to engage diverse disciplines and diverse partner organizations.

Programs that provide experiential opportunities to build interdisciplinary team skills successfully enable graduate students to become leaders in sustainability fields in the workplace and in outreach and service.

Cocurricular graduate student programming focused on community sustainability projects can successfully create valued learning experiences while simultaneously supporting communities with practical solutions to sustainability challenges.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this work is the first longitudinal assessment of the effectiveness of the interdisciplinary cocurricular programming on graduate student sustainability leadership outcomes. The results include feedback received from eight years of cocurricular programming.

Action research by three teaching teams to build the capacity of teachers, in preparation for the transition from a traditional heritage building to a new innovative learning facility, forms the basis of this chapter. The new building consisting of four storeys with seven innovative learning environments that support a wide range of teaching and learning opportunities challenged the teams to rethink their pedagogy and embark on a new and exciting journey. The story notes the challenges faced and the successes achieved as well as further action research once established within the new learning environments.

The study aims to examine the mediating effect of psychological well-being (PWB) on the relationship between teamwork skills and student engagement (SE) in higher education institutional setups.

The study used a triangulation mixed-methods approach. Data were collected from final-year students pursuing post-graduation and graduation in private colleges in India. In the main study, quantitative data was gathered from 276 students through a survey. The relationship among the variables-teamwork skills, SE and PWB was empirically validated through path analysis; mediation was also conducted. In the auxiliary study, qualitative data was gathered through focus group sessions and was analyzed using thematic analysis.

Results depicted that teamwork skills positively predict students' engagement with their academic program. Additionally, PWB partially mediates the relationship between teamwork skills and SE.

The study was conducted to expand understanding of aspects related to promoting students' engagement in HEIs in Delhi and Haryana through being attentive toward teamwork skills development and through taking care of students' PWB.

Teamwork is necessary for engineering to address today’s complex challenges. Therefore, team members must improve their teamwork competencies for more significant team development and effectiveness. This study aimed to analyze how a non-directive coaching intervention model for an entire team influences the individual team members’ teamwork competencies.

Action research was used in this study with a quasi-experimental design featuring control and experimental groups comprising final-year engineering students from Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. The sample included 168 students, with 132 in the control group and 36 in the experimental group. The experimental group underwent a non-directive team coaching intervention involving three sessions. Competencies were evaluated using the teamwork competency test (TWCT), administered at the course’s beginning and end to measure progress.

The results show that the individuals who participated in the team coaching significantly increased their competencies, particularly “conflict resolution” and “feedback.”

This study’s value contributes to identifying the positive impacts of non-directive team coaching interventions on individual teamwork competencies, fostering collaborative skills and supporting collective goals.