Hello to all,

The topic caught my attention and as yet no reviews, will inaugurate them then. Congratulations to Professor Kathleen Fahy for proposing a forum so relevant.

The working group was placed as a desirable competence for most functions, professions, activities, etc.. current and has been placed as an educational goal for the twenty-first century most of the discussions about teaching, learning and teaching today.

The first point I would make is to the character of group work in the modern sense that means, in short, collaborative work. I emphasize that to say that the concept of collaborative work is a step further than the concept of teamwork. So, do not just work together, each doing something. It is a type of group work that aims to bring the collaborative participation to reach a certain end (goal, project, mission, vision, etc..).

So it is deciding how to provide students with forms of collaborative group work. This means that the team or team will have to decide to add the cooperation strategies, to systematize the collaborations and ultimately deciding which collaborations will stand out as the most valuable, or as series of collaboration can turn into something new (solution , strategy, etc..) will only be possible from groupthink.

But that kind of collective work are we talking? collective work in surgery heart requires certain forms. The collective work to make a decision organizational forms. To (re) define directions of a project, other ...

I think a way to start doing this may be to think about what tools (I'll call it that) management can use to manage the collective work in the numerous needs that it can manifest, since decisions on surgery until a decision on a specific project management for example. Perhaps we should think of a list of ways in which collaborative work can appear to start thinking about it ... :)

Well, it was just a "kick" from this initial discussion, the theme of which promises to be very lively.

A fraternal embrace to all,

S.

Hi Kathleen,

Teaching and assessing teamwork skills for individual students can be quite challenging and at times confussing especially when it involves multi-disciplinary team. However, the reward to students is also immessurable as it helps to cultivate in the students the ability of teamworking and networking capability. I have just finished teaching and assessing 3rd Year students on the Module: Globalisation and Development course and my students are mixed with some from the Department of Sociology as well as Department of Social Works and Social Policy. These students are different in the sense that the sociology students tended to be more academic and younger while the Social Work students tended to be more of matured students and their course is more of a practical nature as they are usually expected to complete substantial work placements. In the first semester the social work students went on work placements and joined us only for the second semester. It was in this second semester that I assessed them through teamwork in which students are put in groups of two, three or four students to facilitate the weekly tutorial classes based on the weeks particular preparatory readings, which they have to present to the class and seek class input through discussion and debate based on the readings and the questions the team introduced to kick-start the class.

Students were assessed based on three criterias: 1. Teamworking and Time Management (how the group worked well as a team in terms of sharing task and being able to prepare and plan effectively their individual presentation inputs and organising the class as well as keeping to the time limit allocated to them usually 45 minutes); 2. Questions and Debates (how effective the group was able to get the class debating the day's topic, which was usaully based on the kind of questions they posed and how they posed them in order to generate effective debate and whether they used methods like dividing the students into smaller groups like Fishbowl approach, etc; 3 Class Discussion (how the group was able to get good or excellent discussions out of the class, which also relates to many other factors transcending the first and second criterias as well).

At the end, my students were individually assigned the overall mark the group received such as First class, 2.1, 2.2, 3rd class and so on. Individual student recieve the same mark according to their specific overall grading.

In fact, it worked well for me and my students, as they reported strong satisfaction because, given the readings for that particular week which the team has to prepare on and present to the class and lead them in discussion and debate, it made them to thoroughly read and understand that particular topic. It also served as a bonus to them in preparing for their end of year exam paper which covers every week single topic for the entire 12 week tutorial classes. I also sent to them the materials presented by the other groups each week so that everyone got the materials they themselves did not present on and they were also able to discuss further with their peers on the topics they did not present on and vise versa. Thus acting as experts on the topics they have presented on, which incidentally extended peer-tutoring collegiality.

Dear Peter and Sergio, thanks for your enthuiastic contributions. I have been focussing on improving student teamwork skills along with a participatory action research group here in Australia. We have been working with Health and Education students. I agree with you Sergio about collabortion being central and thought you might find our definitions useful.

"The concept of a ‘team’ is ill-defined in the literature with some authors using the words ‘group’ and ‘team’ synonymously (Tomcho and Foels 2012) . The distinction between group and team is important because groups allow for individualistic action whereas teams require interdependence, coordination and collaboration. Within the literature, there is general agreement that a group of individuals who have most of the following defining characteristics is a ‘team’. Teams 1) share a collective identity; 2) have shared goals; 3) are synergistically interdependent in terms of tasks and/or team outcomes; 4) members have distinctive roles; and 5) they are part of a larger organisational context (Hughes and Jones 2011)(Morgeson, Lindoerfer, and Loring, 2009; Kozlowski and Ilgen, 2006). For this project we define a ‘team’ as a coordinated group of interdependent individuals, with distinct roles and a collective identity, who work collaboratively towards shared goals.

Dear Peter,

I am glad you had such a good experience with teamwork but I wonder about everyone getting the same mark. When this form of mark is allocated then generally only some members of the team do the work and others are socially loafing. We used peer-based assessment (both quantitiative and qualitative) within clear guidelines and with the unit coordinator having the final say about the individual student mark.

Dear Kathleen,

You are right regarding the validity of individuals sharing or getting the same mark. However, if we should take the definition of a 'team' you provided above, then at least in principle allocating the same mark to all in a team is very just and absolutely the best thing to do. I also would like to point out that we have in place other mechanisms for assessing individual's academic performance, such as: 1. Individual essay writing (for Sociology students) or work placements (for Social Work students) which was done in the first semester; 2. A final end of year examination. So for the teamwork strand in the second semester, I will argue it is perfectly just and valid since it was team-work and not individual-work being graded at this time. Moreover, how can individuals be judged separately in a teamwork when the whole 'goal' as stated by Sergio Silva above should be the emphasis on 'collaborative work', which I firmly subscribe.

Secondly, if we stick to your description of what a 'team' entails: my students have all subscribed to this particular module (Globalisation and Development), and are also in their 3rd Year, and have been well informed of the criterias for grading them which requires them performing distinctive roles according to how they decided to share and allocate tasks among themselves. But the trick is that they must work as a team and to deliver their assignment as a well coordinated team players. The assessment was not to judge individual performances separately but to judge how the team worked together.

Of course, individuals tend to stand out in certain areas more than others, but again the trick is respecting that others have distinctive talents too and that the team must work wisely to harness all these potentials for effective team work. For example, a student who believes h/she has the best leadership skill (or even a control freak per se; if ever the team would let him/her) may be the one who will voluntarily coordinate the team and ensure that tasks are shared equally and everyone is allocated tasks they have comparative advantage at, if need be. Again in another team, members may not know how best to design powerpoit presentations for example, but, may be one of their members knows how to do this perfectly well and may be willing to assist the team in that area voluntarily. All these individual strenghts not only enhances team performance but most importantly others get to be motivated and even learn new transferable skills from their team-mates at the course of completing this asignment. That is the big catch and this is how students' teamwork skills that you seek tend to be improved.

Remember also that my students are all in 3rd year and therefore are pretty good in reading and analysing academic texts and research articles for which they have been assigned to read and present. For this reason they have no problem reading and analysing collaboratively. As the coordinator of this assignment I made sure they were provided enough reading lists to share among themselves; and that every member in a team as well as the whole class are obliged to read all the readings for that week.

Once everyone in the team is allocated a sub-reading to present with the team, the team has to work out how their presentation will go and how they would coordinate the class as well as keeping everything within the time limit. This may not be workable in universities where the students are very lazy and not serious. For us here in Trinity College all our students are very serious and motivated in their learning and as such are ready for challenges that come from teamworks, believing they would learn from it. It is never an easy thing to do but the outcome is unquantifiable - so says the students' feedbacks and they are happy with the group marking as well. This is also very important and empirically sound for validating the fairness of allocating general group mark equally to individuals in a team.

Hello Kathleen,

Very good definition you are using. I share the principles contained therein. So you have started very well :)

As for the evaluation (his conversation with Peter) really like the idea of ​​self-evaluation as well. The peer assessment which you refer with Pedro also includes self-assessment, I imagine.

If this seems an excellent model. If an evaluation among peers, I think it could be useful at some point a self-evaluation as well.

Could you please give some details about the type of work (project) in which they are engaged? (if you can share it).

One more thing, please: how has given the dialogue between the teams and how do you manage this process and the new contributions of the people?

See you later.

S.

Hi Kathleen,

Sergio has really hit at the point I was aiming for.

You are right Sergio, my contribution is best when seen as a 'self-assessment' report on teamwork with multi-disciplinary student group. That is exactly the message I was very desparate to highlight and suggest to Professor Kathleen. Imagine I am being interviewed on my experiences on teaching and assessing students using teamwork approach. That was my objective evaluation, which very importantly included students' own feedback regarding the whole process and outcome. If Kathleen sees it this way, it would make more sense to include such self-evaluation' in her 'excellent model' as you Sergio is suggesting above.

Hello Peter,

as I said (even excited by the concept of teamwork that Kathleen left) I really imagine that his valuation model contemplates a self-assessment :)

So the idea is that you can evaluate their peers and can also self-evaluate. In this case, returning to the example of your interview, your interviewer will have in hand the outcome of their peers and their self-assessment to chat with you.

Respects,

S.

Yes, you are both right. We use self and peer assessment. It is working well now but we have been using Action Research for 18 months now to get it to this point. I am heading up a grant proposal here in Australia to gain funding to disseminate the resources we are developing which includes what will be self-paced lessons and the validated rubric which is still being piloted but gets better all the time. If our grant proposal is accepted then at that point I would be willing to make our resources available. If you are interested in that then it would be good to talk further at that time which will be about Octobter.

Dear Kathleen,

From social constructivist view the best way for assessing and teaching at the same time is using formative assessment which includes portfolio assessment. self and peer assessment. In action research portfolio is promising.

regards,

Bathaie

Hi Mahnaz, yes, we are uing constructivst learning too. We are using self and peer formative and summative assessment where the formative assessment doesn't count for marks but is useful for corrective feedback. We are not using portfolios specifically for teamwork but we are using portfolios for professional experiences.

Bathaie, would you be willing to share what an action research portfolio is and what it may look like? I just completed teaching a graduate level research course with a participatory action research component. I used peer-assessment to the extent that I am able but our university has a requirement that no more than 30% of the total grade can be assessed in that way. I think a portfolio sounds like a great idea.

Hi all. Very constructive ideas. I agree with Kathleen and Bathaie about using the constructivst approach. Our students work in an integrative final senior project to graduate. A ruberic is used to assess the whole work based on technical knowledge, creativity, critical thinking, etc...

However, the grade is divided into three parts:

35% based on class work including critical thinking essays and research topics.

65% allocated to two styles: 60% for the manuscript preparation or final report and 40% for an oral presentation which helps in identifying the individual contribution, presentation skills (non-verbal), and oral presentation skills.

Therefore, students at the end may not get the same grade although they did work together all the way on the final report.

Just to complete the picture in my contribution. Students are divided into teams of three students mostly, few teams have two members.

Hi Hussin, my reading of the teamwork literature is that teams should be 5-7 members ideally becuase that allows an even spread of expertise and sufficient skill diversity. Also, importantly, the teacher should orgainse the students into teams so that no coalitions of friends form which can marginalise students who are not 'in' with the 'in' crowd.

Hello all!

I am coming into this conversation late, and for that I apologize. I would like to comment on three things:

First, the aspect of the conversation related to discriminating between teamwork, collaboration, etc. is important, and I concur with the distinctions made so far. Because teamwork may or may not involve collaboration, and collaborations may not involve a group that identifies as a team, these distinctions are essential in order to assess accurately.

Second, I believe it is somewhat of an accepted fallacy that assigning a group grade on teamwork is appropriate. There are several reasons for this. First, the student's course grade, that feeds the GPA or overall educational grade, is distinctly designed to articulate the individual's performance. A group grade, by definition, does not communicate anything about a student's individual performance. Peter, I do understand the concept and the ideal behind thinking that a group must work together in order to achieve its end, but the crucial piece is - it doesn't have to do so in order to achieve its end. One person could end up doing all the work, divvy up the presentation/speaking parts, and none would be the wiser. Thus, educators need to identify ways to assess the individual's contributions to teamwork, and their grade needs to be based on that, as opposed to the group grade. Otherwise it is adding an additional confounding variable to course grades and individual GPA's, weakening the effectiveness of course grades and GPA as measures of individual performance and learning.

Lastly, Kathleen asked about teaching teamwork, and I did not see much in this discussion about that or the essential components of teamwork that would ultimately constitute the rubric. The Assc. of American Colleges and Universities has developed a set of rubrics through a very rigorous development and vetting process. They are intended for institutional level evaluation of student work samples, but they are useful in terms of identify key components for course level evaluation as well. Their set includes one on Teamwork, which may be helpful to educators wanting to assess teamwork.

I hope this helps! Take care.

http://www.aacu.org/value/rubrics/index_p.cfm?CFID=47916072&CFTOKEN=48297565

Hi Stan. What a wonderful, thoughtful and full contribution, thank you. I have just submitted an application for a team of academics from four Australian universities to teach and assess teamwork skills. We have conducted a critical literature review and selected the AACU teamwork rubric for development and evaluation. We have been piloting our rubric this year. We are currently engaged in expert evaluation of our definitions for teamwork and each of its five domains (in line with AACU rubric). We are also engaging students in an evaluation of the rubric via focus groups. We have been teaching the skills of: project planning and management, fostering a team climate, facilitating the contributions of others and managing conflict in teams as well as self-reflection. We have mid- semester peer feedback and end of semester self and peer feedback. The academic moderates the peer feedback and assigns an individual mark. The team share the same mark for the project but individual marks are different because we assign30-50% of the final mark to individual teamwork mark. The whole process is carefully managed by the unit coordinator to prevent bullying or mobbing.

Kathleen

That sounds great, Kathleen! Personally, I especially value the managing conflict piece, as that is a critical skill that is often under-developed such that people avoid it and it has become synonymous with being a good teammate. Then those who do not avoid conflict are often criticized for it when they are actually performing at a higher level. That's not true across the board, but I see it often.

Absolutely agree. We have had a number of our 'experts' want to change the word to 'managing communications' or anything else but not say the conflict word. Whatever is not expressed is suppressed in my experience. We have has some conflict in teams; especially if someone doesn't like their anonymous peer feedback. We are managing that by saying it is unacceptable to question or challenge your team mates as that can be seen as intimidation and if it were to continue, bullying. I'm ready to use university policies about appropriate student behaviours to enforce civil forms of communicating; including the non-verbal forms. So far, so good but we are on a real reflective learning cycle ourselves.

At one institution I was working at, I came into a team culture as a supervisor where student staff did not give each other direct feedback and then used their anonymous peer feedback as a means to dump everything on them. I changed that where their peer feedback was NOT anonymous, required at least 1 meaningful (not superficial) aspect they needed to improve on, and I modeled that in my 1:1's with them. I also set the expectation that nothing on their peer eval should be a surprise to the person receiving it, and when I found out someone had not given the feedback directly before the peer eval, I would address it directly with that staff person and mandate a discussion between the both of them. They learned they did a lot better with those conversations on their own terms and in about 3 years, they were receiving better feedback from each other than they were from me, because they saw each other so much more frequently. Concurrently, their team identity and relationships became much more nuanced and effective. They were based less on personal friendships and more on the quality of their work and support for each other.

OK, it would be good to talk because I have had the opposite problem Stan; they give each other high marks. I manage the possibility of 'dumping' by using the social media policies and anti-bullying policies of the university. The peer feedback is not annonymous to the unit coordinator so we know who said what and can take action if abuse occurs. Within this framework abuse does not occur. Yes, and like you we get students to give a brief rationale for each aspect of their assessments.

Are you looking for a person who is teaching Team work skills?, or any tips for assessing it among students?

Our research laboratory has developped a Internet computer application that does teamwork assessment in an Educational context for team with several levels of hierarchy. In that case, the answer to your question is an Internet computer application that is assessing teamwork skills.

Chapter The Internet Implementation of the Hierarchical Aggregate As...

Conference Paper Teamwork assessment with several levels of hierarchy: A link...