“I thought 'as soon as you get a team together, half of the job is done and everything else will systematically fall into place'… until now it never occurred to me that everyone in the team must take responsibility to make the project a success.” Had I known this was one of my students, I would have contacted Christopher Avery...

I recently was contacted by a university professor asking for some success tips in giving team assignments to university students. When I was a visiting faculty member I experimented to find out what worked best. My students were generally Juniors and Seniors at The University of Texas at Austin. Here's what I learned and shared with the fellow who asked. Conditions for...