Teamwork in Learning Is Passé: How Guided Independence Builds Deep Learning – Faculty Focus

I will never forget the expression of bewilderment and abject fear on my undergraduate researcher’s face when I said “Can you create a mathematical model of worms messing up age layering?” I am sure he was thinking “She’s nuts. What rational geological mind can think superposition is a myth?” But what he said was “Ok.” 

A week later, he came back with “I don’t know what to do.” I replied, “Draw a picture to visualize the process.” A few days went by, then he asked “How deep can worms go anyway?” I replied with only facts “Worms can theoretically go down 20 cm into the sediment, but it’s more like 5 cm realistically.” With that he went silent, for a couple of weeks. Then, he asked for a one-on-one meeting. I lamented “He is going to tell me he is quitting my lab. He doesn’t feel he is learning.” 

Instead, he showed up with a mischievous grin, beaming with confidence, fired up his laptop, and started talking fast: “I assigned an age to each layer. First, I did a 3-point running average…” and he went on explaining the sophisticated mathematical model he created for a process that is notoriously difficult to quantify, even for professional environmental scientists: bioturbation. He discovered for himself that he can solve seemingly intractable problems because he trusted that I wouldn’t give him a problem he couldn’t solve.  

For decades the prevailing wisdom in academia is that embedding teamwork in all of our classes is the best way for students to learn. However, there is no amount of teamwork that will compete with how much my student learned from being forced to think on his own; nor will the support of any team boost his self-confidence with the same depth. 

Ultimately, that is how both sense of belonging on campus and life-long self-confidence are built – through personal academic success.  

Why Teamwork Holds Such Appeal

But teamwork is all the rage in modern higher education pedagogy literature building on the idea that requiring students to work in teams prepares them for the workforce while providing them scaffolding and support from their peers. Also, teamwork is a method to socialize the learner, get them out of their pandemic funk, and make them talk to others to articulate their ideas better. In the real world, teams require the collaboration of members with distinct expertise – and sometimes individuals on a team are not physically together or may not even know each other. The work is done through digital communication where everyone submits “their part” of the task and the team leader collates the work. This “divide and conquer” approach provides greater efficiency and productivity. And there are also times when one team member is slated to repeat the work of another for repeatability and measuring uncertainty.  

This is undoubtably true and, truth be told these ideas have a modicum of merit. 

However, with over a quarter century of college teaching under my belt, I see teamwork in the classroom as similar to AI – it has its value, but it cannot replace solitary learning and has drawbacks that are difficult to repair. Confidence and personal capacity grow only through guided struggle and trial and error; not through working with cohorts.  

When Efficiency Overshadows Learning

When the goal is learning and not efficiency, “divide and conquer” becomes an impediment. Even when students are told each member of a team must submit their own completed assignment, they gravitate toward delegating parts of the assignment among various team members, and then copying from each other to complete the assignment. Students finish their work faster, but such division of labor diminishes the learning for each team member and, despite all the best attempts to thwart such behavior and warnings from faculty, all team members suffer when exam time arrives and they cannot demonstrate mastery of the underlying content.  

The Limits of Collaboration for Learning and Well-Being

Decades-worth of psychology literature reveals that brainstorming as a group is counter-productive unless first the participants are allowed to isolate and think for themselves. Forcing teamwork dulls skill-building efforts and individuals become reliant on “the competent other” rather than on “self.”  

Students carry personal traits that most faculty are untrained to address like social anxiety, depression, autism, neurodivergent tendencies, or generalized anxiety. Teamwork can inadvertently exacerbate underlying mental illnesses or neurodivergent needs which detracts from the learning of all students on the team.  

Moreover, teamwork either promotes groupthink or, more commonly, causes complacency in weaker members of the team – they learn little by over-relying on other team members. This leads to loss of accountability among team members as well. Also, teamwork tends to promote the irresponsible and overuse of the internet and AI. While asking each team member to evaluate every other member, including AI, is a safeguard against many of these drawbacks, it isn’t foolproof and doesn’t reduce frustration among team members.  

Centering Independence as a Learning Goal

Lastly, faculty are highly specialized academic professionals bringing years of both disciplinary and educational expertise into the classroom. Asking them to guide teams instead of teaching individuals is often interpreted as insulting, violating academic freedom, and may provoke responses like “I’m not a ‘cruise director’ guiding group adventures which return little learning bang for the teamwork buck.” 

I’ll finish with a quote from George Carlin: “Somewhere along the way, someone is going to tell you, ‘There is no “I” in team.’ What you should tell them is, ‘Maybe not. But there is an “I” in independence, individuality, and integrity.” 

Author’s Note: No AI was used in the writing of this piece. Every word is the author’s and hers alone. 

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An academic for over a quarter of a century, Figen Mekik is the founder and lead PI of the Mekik Climatology Lab. She is a professor of Geology, a climate scientist, and micropaleontologist. Figen has been teaching at the college level for three decades. Also, she chaired the Geology Department for 6 years, served as Chair to the University Academic Senate for two terms, and served as President of her section at the American Geophysical Union for two terms (Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology). 

References

“Bioturbation”, Wikipedia, 2026. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioturbation

Tomas Chamorro-Premusic, “Why Group Brainstorming is a Waste of Time”, Harvard Business Review, 2015. https://hbr.org/2015/03/why-group-brainstorming-is-a-waste-of-time

“Groupthink.” ScienceDirect, 2012. https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/social-sciences/groupthink.

Amanda Gangler Horrigan, “Understanding How AI Affects Team Performance: Challenges and Insights for Successful Integration”, Columbia Business School, 2023. https://business.columbia.edu/insights/business-society/understanding-how-ai-affects-team-performance-challenges-and-insights