Best practices for project-based learning
Practical tools and tips for supporting student teamwork in project courses, without adding extra stress to your teaching.
How can I use project instructors to support my teams?
Instructors can be a valuable support for teamwork, if you support them too. Clear roles and communication make a difference.
General considerations
It鈥檚 not uncommon to utilize instructors or mentors to support student teams during their project. In fact, especially for research project courses, this tends to be the standard at Aalto. Usually primary role of project instructors tends to be seen as technical and scientific support. While instructors are seldom expected to be experts in team dynamics, they do meet regularly with the team and are thus in a good position to notice early signs of challenges in collaboration. With this in mind, it makes sense to encourage instructors to also pay attention to how students collaborate. If the instructors recognize that they could try to foster a good teamwork environment, it makes them more likely to address team dynamics issues or get in touch with you if they feel they need support related to this.
Smooth instructor work requires that the role of the instructor is clear to all parties: the repsonsible teacher, instructors themselves and to the students. It鈥檚 good practice to be explicit about the expectations and responsibilities that instructors should consider from grading to session participation and everything else between. Further, while you want to communicate that instructors can and should also try to support their students teamworking-wise, it is vital that they don鈥檛 feel left alone to handle that burder. Expectation of teamwork related support can feel intimidating, especially for those instructors who perceive not having the necessary teamwork related expertise. So it makes sense to highlight that any team issues can always be communicated to you and other鈥檚 in the teching team so that they鈥檙e not alone with their issues.
Too support instructors in their work, it is helpful to foster a shared sense of purpose and inclusion. Highlighting that instructors are not just external helpers, but part of the broader teaching team is one key starting point. Responsible teachers can reinforce this by facilitating communication and providing practical tools that help instructors feel supported and prepared鈥攆or example, regular status update emails, coaching tips, or short common meetings at key points during the course to discuss team progress. These practices not only lower the threshold for reaching out but also help instructors stay aligned with course goals. Finally especially for more novice instructors, it can also be motivating to frame the instructor role as an opportunity to develop mentoring and communication skills.
Quick recommendations
- Set up a structure that combines both meetings and asynchronous communication, like emails. For example having 1) Systematic teaching team meetings, starting with a kick-off meeting before the course starts, ending with post-course debrief session for collective reflection and feedback and some mid-course check-ins at suitable points of time for discussing course practicalities and student team related sparing; and 2) Regular email status-updates which include summaries of teaching team meetings and information about issues and topics instructors should be aware about in different phases of the course.
- Define instructor role carefully and explicitly. Encourage instructors to engage with students beyond content coaching, including teamwork and dynamics support. Assure the instructors that support is available if issues arise and ensure that this support can really be tapped into.
Methods & tools
Short description
Teaching team meetings are a core method for supporting instructors during a project course. They create a structured yet informal setting for discussing course progress, aligning expectations, and sharing ideas. Meetings typically cover topics such as grading, project deliverables, and student support. A clear meeting structure across the course helps instructors feel more confident and supported in their role, while ensuring consistency in course delivery.
Structure-wise, it is recommended to begin with a kick-off meeting before the course starts to build shared understanding of the course goals, instructor roles, and collaboration practices. Equally valuable is the final debriefing meeting, which offers space for reflecting on successes and challenges and identifying development ideas for future iterations. Between these two endpoints, a few meetings timed around key course milestones can be very valuable. These sessions are an opportunity to check in on team progress and tackle any arising challenges. Meetings should always include time for discussion and reflection for managing any issues that instructors might have faced.
How to motivate use of this method to instructors
- Emphasize participation as easy way to stay up-to-date about what is happening in the course.
- Underline that meetings are possibility to share good practices and get peer support for handling any challenges that might arise during the course.
Potential challenges and how to avoid them
- Instructors are hesitant to share their challenges or discuss their teams 鈫 Have clear and simple structure and guiding questions to drive the discussion during the session. For example asking every participant to say something about these two questions tends to work quite well: 1) 鈥淗ow has your team been performing?鈥 and 2) 鈥淲hat kind of challenges have you faced lately?鈥.
- Instructors might skip meetings 鈫 Set clear agendas and align meetings with course milestones to ensure relevance. Prepare for limited participation so that you don鈥檛 need to improvise if there鈥檚 less people present in the session than you expected.
Suitable especially if:
- You want to build a stronger teaching community and lower the treshold of instructors contacting you if they need help
- You want to increase the likelyhood coaching and information between teams is consistent.
Short description
Email updates are a simple but essential method for keeping instructors aligned during a project course. While teaching team meetings offer live discussion, emails ensure that all instructors, including those who can鈥檛 attend meetings, stay informed. Well-crafted update messages can serve multiple purposes: they remind about upcoming deadlines, clarify responsibilities, and provide access to key materials such as grading rubrics, assignment descriptions, or shared folders. Despite their simplicity, it鈥檚 surprisingly easy to forget to use emails systematically, especially when things get busy.
Potential challenges and how to avoid them
- Emails might be overlooked if they are too long or unclear 鈫 Use informative subject lines and structured bullet-point summaries. Only include the most important information in the email text and refer to additional slides or documents for further details.
- Forgetting to send the updates 鈫 Anchor your emails to course milestones (e.g. grading deadlines, teaching team meetings) or specific timing logic (monthly update) to build a routine.
Suitable especially if:
- Instructors have varying levels of availability
- The course involves multiple grading components or shared materials
- You want to build a low-effort but reliable communication backbone for the course
Coaching guides
A coaching guide is a concise document provided to instructors to help them support student teams during a project course. It can include weekly themes, practical tips for running team meetings, advice for common challenges, and reminders of important deadlines. A well-designed guide reduces uncertainty, improves alignment between instructors, and strengthens the quality of guidance students receive. It is particularly useful for instructors who are new to teaching or mentoring roles.
What to include in the guide depends on your needs. Maybe you want to make instructors comfortable in running student team meetingsa and ensure alignment between meeting practices, in which case you could provide a recommended team meeting structure for example. Then again if you want to empower your instructors to address team dynamics issues, maybe you can higlight some common challenges and ways to solve them. Or, if you want to support project content related coaching, you might include a timeline with recommended deadlines for completing certain tasks. While there is no right or wrong answers here, it makes sense to think about your coaching guide goals carefully, since making the guide does take time. Remember also that the guide doesn鈥檛 need to cover everything if you have other support structures in use as well, for example the teaching team meetings.
Potential challenges and how to avoid them:
- A too long or detailed guide may go unread or uniwritten. Keep the format simple, structured, and focused on key priorities. Ensure that you have a clear idea what you want to focus on with the guide.
- If instructors already attend frequent meetings or receive detailed email updates, make sure the guide complements those materials properly.
Suitable especially if:
- You want to increase consistency in how instructors support student teams.
- Instructors change between course implementations but course stays relatively stable content and structure-wise. The guide will then reduce your workload in terms of getting new instructors up to speed and comfortable with the course.
