Global markets and sophisticated information technology have increased the pace of competition. To succeed in this new environment, firms are evolving their organizational structure from purely hierarchical to more team-oriented groups. As a result, university recruiters want engineering and business graduates to perform well in groups. Unfortunately, there is some evidence that universities have not been able to meet this goal (Davis et al. 1997 and Siegel and Sorensen 1994) . To provide our

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... udents with productive group experiences, we studied the characteristics of successful group environments, and now create similar situations in our classrooms. Patterning our groups after self-directed work groups (SDWGs), we have developed and refined a structure that allows students to control long-term group activities, including task organization, compensation, and problem resolution (Zuidema and Kleiner 1994) . We have used these forms in a range of Computer Science classes and upper-division Accounting and CIS classes. We will present the structure we impose and anecdotal results from these experiences.