American employers struggle to find qualified workers with a well-developed skill set. The interprofessional skills – interpersonal, teamwork, and communication skills – gap is particularly problematic, with 90% of employers reporting these skills as equally, or more important than, technical skills. Current educational practices assume that interprofessional skills can be learned through traditional lab and group work. Often these exercises are too discipline-specific, and students are not exposed to the foundational concepts and theories required for successful interdisciplinary team-based collaboration and communication. New hires are most valued when their educational experiences mirror their employment. In true interdisciplinary teamwork, individual team members only have a subset of the knowledge, skills, and abilities required to solve a problem and must depend on each other to achieve the desired outcome. Teamwork requires effective communication, knowledge transfer, and reliable/effective performance of assigned tasks. Assessing skills like these can also be problematic for data-driven scientists and faculty. However, in-major courses can be used for students to practice all their interpersonal, teamwork, and communication skills. In this talk we share our experiences and logistical considerations in integrating and assessing an undergraduate tissue regeneration research project into the organic and cell & molecular biology coursework.

Assessing teamwork-intensive coursework: Laying a framework

254th National Meeting (2017)

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