Using Teams in the Course

Often times when we use teams in a course we suppose that all students know already how to work in teams. However most often it is not the case!

A team is more than a group of students working together for class purposes. Teams are organized and goal oriented groups or 3-5 students working for a relative longer period of time completing together course assignments (as compared to small groups that in general work together for a class period on a small in-calss assignment). For this reason is it always a good idea for the instructor to form groups instead of allowing students to group together by friendships.

In order to form groups the instructor should explain students how they will work in teams across the semester and collect some information about the students in the first day of classes. A good explanation about forming teams instead of allowing self-grouping is that in the work force teams will be formed by skills or needs and not based on friendship (especially when is very possible the firends will work at another company). To make a good mix of skills and abilities in a team the instructor should ask some general questions:

- contact information

- academic major & year of study

- grades in any prerequisite courses

- times when the student is NOT available to work in team outside class

- if they have a job aside from being student

- area they live in (for grouping by closeness)

- gender (optional)

- ethnicity (optional)

- other questions such as: number of siblings, pets, favorite food, favorite sport, hobby, etc. These would help students share information that makes the acquintance less threatening.



Once the instructor collects the information sheet from everyone s/he can proceed to form teams. two major criteria should be kept as goal in team formation:

- to have a good mix of skills and abilities (by using the prerequisite course grade; or any other question that the instructor might like to use that taps into skills and abilities necessary for that course content).

- to have a balanced diversity in the team (using the responses to the gender and ethnicity questions; if a student did not respond to those questions then s/he will be randomly assigned to a team). Make sure you do not schedule intentional minorities in a team (e.g., only one female student, only one African American).

- as much possible keep track of the times they list as NOT begin able to meet and the Zone they live in. This is to avoid time conflicts or commuting issues.



The best advice is to have a list of team work expectations, guidelines to work in teams, and consequences of team disfunctionality in your syllabus. team work rules and policies can be set by the team members and stated in writing.

When using teams in your course is always good to ask your students to complete a Team Agreement Form, this will help all students in a team to exchange information and to set some basic rules of working in teams. As well as list any eventual consequences that the team members agree upon in case a team member does not complete the assigned task. The instructor should keep a copy of the team agreement form for future reference. In case of team work issues first always refer to the Team agreement form.

To make the team more cohesive is a good idea to ask students to pick a name for their team, as well as set roles for each member. The roles may change as tasks and semester evolves. make students aware that setting up roles will help them be more efficient as well as give them a clear structure in what concerns who needs to do what.

make students aware that the most usual conflicts in a team are related to the disfunctional roles such as: couch potatoes (let time go by), dominant leaders (listen to me I know better), hitchhikers (after not completing the work they claim how hard they worked and request the same grade), resistant members (my way or no way), divergent goal seakers ("I must get an A in this class" vs. "Who cares"). If you allow students to use the "firing rule" make sure you state it in your syllabus in detail -- the team can fire a member who does not contribute to the work; followed by the consequence that the fired member must find another team who will accept the person in their team; or have the fired person complete alone all other tasks and be grades based on that.



However is not enough only to help your students develop team working skills and set up some team work rules. It is very important that you, the instructor, measure the work each student put into the team work. You also must decide ahead of time what percentage of student grade in the course is based on team work. That should clearly be listed in the syllabus. Students should also have up front access to the rubric you will use to measure team work. You can choose many different criteria to evaluate team work. Is always good to take into consideration not only the content and presentation of final product, but also the process of work in teams (especially if your learning outcomes is listed as team work skills improvement).

For example to evaluate Teams you can ask your students to evaluate the presenting team and to complete this form: Team Work Evaluation Form.

Part of the grade should be accounted for by the way team members evaluate each other. Always explain them that you expect the evaluation to be professional; that means they will not develop a team agreement to evaluate maximally each other. If that is the case you will not be responsible in dealing with any issues that may arise in the team and you will not accept any complains about grading team members since in that case all members of that team will receive the same grade. In order to be able to grade individuals for team work you need their honest and critical feedback via the team evaluation form.