AI-Supported Teaming: Building Skills for Collaboration

Background

Teamwork is central to how students learn, design, solve problems and prepare for future professional work. However, effective teaming often does not happen automatically. Students need opportunities to build self-awareness, communicate expectations, give and receive feedback, manage disagreement and adjust how they work together as a project evolves.

Creating and utilizing team charters can support these teamworking skills by engaging team members in intentional conversation about individual and team strengths, project goals, communication preferences, logistics and roles. AI tools, including an AI-supported charter chatbot, can complement this process by helping students turn their reflections into clearer, practical team agreements that they can revisit throughout a project. AI can help organize individual inputs, identify shared themes, surface gaps or tensions, prompt deeper team discussion, and support project and team check-ins over time.

This project examines how an AI-supported charter process can be designed, implemented and evaluated to strengthen teams’ ongoing reflection, communication and coordination.

Project Description

This project will use a mixed-methods approach to study how AI-supported teamwork tools can help students build stronger teaming skills. In particular, the team will examine how an AI-supported chatbot can help translate students’ reflections on individual strengths, project goals and expectations into clearer team agreements. The team will also explore how AI-supported check-ins can help teams revisit their goals, notice challenges earlier, strengthen accountability, and improve work and interpersonal dynamics over time.

The project includes three phases:

Background and Literature Review: Team members will review existing research on teaming and examples from Duke and other institutions related to team charters, teaming skill development, peer feedback, project check-ins, faculty insights and AI-supported learning tools. This background work will inform revisions of an already existing AI-supported charter chatbot and the development of related prompts or tools for team management and check-ins.
Tool Pilot and Data Collection: The revised tools will be piloted in project-based courses where students work in teams. Students will use the chatbot to support the team chartering process and identify what is working well and discuss adjustments to improve team functioning. The project will utilize quantitative and qualitative data collection, including pre/post surveys on student confidence and attitudes related to teaming, short reflection prompts, project check-in responses, peer feedback, focus groups or interviews, and faculty observations.
Data Analysis: Team members will organize data, identify themes in student responses, summarize findings and prepare materials for dissemination. Analysis will focus on how students perceive the usefulness of AI-supported charter creation and check-ins, whether the tools help students have more productive and effective team conversations, and how the process supports accountability, belonging and team dynamics.

At the start of the project, team members will use the AI-supported charter chatbot to create their own team charter and become familiar with the tool.

Anticipated Outputs

Literature review on teaming tools and practices
Refined AI-supported team charter tool
Refined AI-supported project/team check-in tool
Data collection and analysis
Conference poster
Manuscript draft
Network of faculty, staff and professionals involved in AI teaming tools
User guides and materials for faculty and teams

Student Opportunities

Ideally, this project team will include 2 graduate students and 5-8 undergraduate students with interests in engineering, computer science, data science, education, psychology, sociology or related fields.

Students will gain experience in:

Creating a literature review on teaming practices
Testing and providing feedback on the AI-supported charter chatbot
Developing and refining prompts or tools for project and team check-ins
Learning about research ethics and contributing to IRB processes
Collecting student and faculty perspectives through surveys, interviews, focus groups and/or informal feedback sessions
Organizing and analyzing qualitative and quantitative data
Translating findings into practical recommendations for course use
Preparing dissemination materials, including a conference poster, presentation materials, implementation guide and draft paper or manuscript

Graduate students will have the opportunity to mentor undergraduate students, help design the research protocol, support IRB preparation, lead data analysis, coordinate sub-teams and take a larger role in manuscript preparation.

Timing

Fall 2026 – Spring 2027

Fall 2026:

Submit IRB proposal
Conduct background research on team charters, teaming skills, peer feedback, check-ins and AI-supported learning tools
Review teaming practices from Duke courses and other campuses
Create an annotated bibliography and brief literature review on current knowledge and gaps
Revise AI-supported team charter tools
Develop and refine prompts/tools for team check-ins and project check-ins
Test the AI-supported charter chatbot and provide feedback

Spring 2027:

Collect student and faculty perspectives through surveys, interviews, focus groups and/or feedback sessions
Organize and analyze data from reflections, charters, surveys, check-ins and feedback
Share emerging findings with faculty leads and the teaming committee
Translate findings into practical recommendations for course use
Prepare dissemination materials, including a poster, presentation, implementation guide and draft manuscript
Update and launch revised tools for scaling usage
Identify next steps for future tools, grants, course pilots and research directions

Crediting

Academic credit available for fall and spring semesters