Conditions and assessment methods of the effectiveness of collaboration

Abstract

Collaborative skills represent an increasing value nowadays as the application of teams for implementing projects or solving problems becomes more and more frequent. They are often labelled as 21st century skills which fact also indicates that collaborative skills are essential for being successful in the 21^st century both in work and personal life (Binkley et al., 2012). Considering the raising importance of collaboration it is highly necessary to be aware of the certain factors which influence its effectiveness. The primer aim of this article is to review these factors. The conditions of the effectiveness will be analysed from the perspective of the task type at first. We present what sort of problem types are feasible to be given to teams and what are those phenomena connected to the different task types which can threaten the effectiveness of collaboration. Afterwards the necessary attributes of team members are reviewed from the viewpoint of efficiency. We present the often cited, yet, in Hungary hardly known model of Stevens and Campion (1994). The complex model synthetizes the results of the teamwork researches on effectiveness and identifies fourteen KSAs (knowledge, skills and abilities) arranged in two main categories and five subcategories. A further aim of the article is to give an insight of those individual and team level qualitative instruments by which the efficiency of collaboration, moreover the development of collaborative skills can be tracked.