DOES THE ACADEMIC ENVIRONMENT DEVELOP TEAMWORK EFFICIENCY AMONG STUDENTS?

Abstract

Teamwork skills are considered essential for all areas of a person’s life, so universities take them into account when designing their curricula. These skills are especially important if we are talking about humanities fields. However, little is known about how students’ factors can affect the process of developing teamwork skills. Consequently, our study proposes to fill this gap and to analyze the mastery of teamwork skills by higher education students, measured by the efficiency of working in a team, in relation to teamwork styles, but also with the number of courses whose content allows the development of these skills. One Hundred Ninety-Five female students participated in this study, with an average age of M = 31.5, a standard deviation of SD = 9.2. The participants filled out a questionnaire that measured the efficiency of teamwork and the styles of teamwork based on specialized literature. Also, the questionnaires were first applied in a pilot study in which 50 female students participated and the Cronbach’s internal consistency index was 0.8 for the first questionnaire and 0.77 for the second. The results showed that there are statistically significant correlations between teamwork efficiency, teamwork styles, and the number of courses in which the development of these skills is encouraged, p < 0.01. Moreover, we also noticed that the number of courses in which the development of these skills is encouraged has a mediating effect on the relationship between working styles in a team and the efficiency of working in a team, p < 0.01. These results can support teaching staff in higher education to adopt the most suitable educational methods for the development of teamwork skills, essential skills, especially for students in the humanities domains.