Teamwork is now the basic work structure in most industries (Deepa & Seth, 2013), and teamwork skills are considered one of the most important soft skills needed (Burrus et al., 2013). Organisations need to actively and systematically support teams for their benefit as well as for the benefit of the members and the team (Wenger et al., 2002)

This paper presents findings from a practice-oriented research project which revolves around the collaboration in facilitator teams in the course Experts in Teamwork (EiT) at the Norwegian University of Technology and Sciences (NTNU). EiT is a compulsory master’s degree course at NTNU in which students develop interdisciplinary teamwork skills by collaborating to develop a project. EiT was developed to respond to the expressed need from business and industry for graduates with the enhanced ability and skills to work and collaborate in interdisciplinary teams (Sortland, 2015). Approximately 3,000 students take the course each year. Students are divided into classes of 30 students, called villages. In each village, a facilitator team, normally consisting of one teacher and two learning assistants, facilitates students’ learning. The teacher and the learning assistants have complementary roles in the village, with the teacher having the overall responsibility for the course and particularly the development of the project part. The learning assistant’s role is to facilitate the students` interdisciplinary teamwork processes and support the development of students’ collaboration skills

An educational unit at NTNU called the Experts in Teamwork Academic Section conducts training seminars for teachers and learning assistants – separately and together. One seminar, The Village, specifically focuses on the collaboration between the teachers and learning assistants in facilitator teams. This seminar is the facilitator team’s first meeting and ensures the facilitator team becomes acquainted, converses and plans how they want to work together in the course.

The notion that a proportion of the facilitator teams did not develop a collaborative practice that greatly supported the team in their tasks sparked the project and became the starting point of the practice-oriented research project. An important prerequisite supporting the development of students’ interdisciplinary collaboration skills is that the facilitator team has collaborative practice and uses each other’s complementary knowledge and roles.

The social learning theory of a community of practice (Wenger, 1998) was chosen as a theoretical framework to develop the training seminars in this project and was used as a lens to enquire into facilitator teams’ experiences collaborating during the course. A community of practice is formed by people who share a domain of human activity and who engage in the process of collective learning within that domain. Wenger et al. (2002) propose a structural model with three constituent elements that define a community of practice as a social structure: a shared domain, a community and the practice they develop. The combination provides a social knowledge structure for developing and sharing knowledge and supports collaboration and developing a practice. To actively and systematically cultivate a community of practices to develop and strengthen will benefit the members and their organization (Wenger et al., 2002).

This paper aims to explore the following research questions:

What supports and challenges collaboration between teachers and learning assistants in the facilitator team at EiT?

In which ways can we support teams’ collaborative practice by using communities of practice as a theory and structural model?

Initiators of practice-oriented research projects intend to intervene to promote change (Postholm & Smith, 2017). This practice-oriented research project aims to contribute on three levels: local practice, general practice and the scientific body of knowledge (Goldkuhl, 2012). The overall aims are to facilitate change in local practice and the research-based development of training provided for facilitator teams at EiT. We aim to contribute to knowledge on collaboration in teams for higher education and beyond, theory and the body of research on communities of practice. In the research design, we use action research as a method. Action research often has its starting point in a practical problem for those involved and proceeds to one or more cycles of action planning, taking action and evaluating action (Coghlan & Brannick, 2014). The authors were positioned as researchers in their own organization and worked in the EiT academic section with the responsibility for developing and facilitating training seminars for the facilitator teams. This research project consists of three parts: The first part of the action research project was to identify our concerns and gain insight into how teachers and learning assistants working at EiT in spring 2022 experienced collaboration in the facilitator team, particularly noting what they perceived worked well and what was challenging. Data were collected through discussion with colleagues in the EiT section, teachers in the course and reflection notes from a group of learning assistants. Our analysis was inspired by the critical reflection of Brookfield (2017). The second part: Based on insight and reflection on the data collected, we implemented measures to develop a training seminar for facilitator teams in fall 2022 so it better facilitates the development of good collaborative practices in the facilitator teams. A new structure and content were developed in the training seminar, inspired by how organizations can cultivate communities of practice for their evolution (Wenger et al., 2002). The third part is to evaluate and explore how teachers and learning assistants working at EiT in spring 2023 experience and perceive the collaboration in their teams, what they believe has supported them and what the barriers are to developing a collaborative practice. Separate focus group interviews are planned with three facilitator teams, to be conducted twice with each facilitator team (February and May 2023). Qualitative content analysis will be used to enquire into data (Hsieh & Shannon, 2005).

This paper presents a practice-oriented study in which action research was used as a methodology to enquire into a challenge with supporting teams to develop a collaborative practice. Three main themes were found, as follows: 1) different expectations and understandings of each other’s roles, 2) lack of meeting points and communication channels in the teams and 3) challenges in developing a beneficial collaborative practice because many are new to the job. These findings made us act to improve our practices at the training seminar to better support teams. Our presentations in the seminar accentuated the team as a community of practice with a shared domain; by collaborating as a community with complementary roles, we developed practices to support their learning and practice. Their roles were thoroughly explained, as well as the benefits of their being complementary. We provided them with scaffolding (Puntambekar, 2022) by giving them resources, structures and social support to strengthen their understanding of how they could develop their collaboration together. For example, we provided suggestions for a collaboration agreement and shared experiences on good collaborative practices from earlier teams. In addition, we provided time to collaboratively plan the first phase of the course and shared suggestions for daily schedules and timetables for the course to inspire them. The third part of the research project will be finished in May 2023. Focus group interviews will provide in-depth insight into the action taken and what supports and challenges collaboration between teachers and learning assistants on the facilitator team. We will apply the communities of practice as a lens to enquire further into how we can support teams’ collaborative practices to further develop local practice, contributing to knowledge on teamwork for higher education and beyond as well as the theory of research on communities of practice.

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