How can I help students get started?
This Page: Educating Students | Getting Acquainted | Starting Exercises | References
Educating Students
Since teamwork is an learned skill, it is recommended that you educate students about the teamwork process. This can include a short presentation and question and answer session; giving out guidelines for team work in the syllabus; or referring students to guidelines on student team work.
Some available online guides written for students include:
Building Blocks for Teams - Student
Guide: The student version of this Web site.
Puzzled About
Teams?: From the Penn State Schreyer Institute.
Common Ground Rules for Teams
Many successful teams estabish ground rules such as etiquette rules, procedures for commuinicating online, revision procedures and more. A project template or suggested set of ground rule can teams a basic framework to begin with. See the following pages in the T.L.T. Building Blocks for Teams Student Guide for some samples of different ground rules.
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Getting Acquainted
An important step to building teams is for the team members to introduce themselves and become acquainted. Encourage students to share information about their majors, hometowns, their interests, personal home pages and, of course, their e-mail address.
You can also use "icebreaker" exercises in class to start a first discussion among the team. Some possible icebreaker exercises can include:
- Each member names his or her favorite movie, TV show, or snack food with no comment. The team later discusses why each person made those particular selections.
- Each member explains how he or she got their first name
- Members could answer a hypothetical question such as "If you could travel any place in the world, where would you go?"
- Members can state the last book or movie each has seen.
- Members can answer a forced-choice question such as "Which is better, football or basketball?,""the future or the present?" or one related to the course.
TECH TIP: If you don't have class time for an ice-breaker exercise, you can ask students to post a short bio of themselves or answer an icebreaker question in an ANGEL message board or other online discussion area.
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Starting Exercises
Some short brainstorming exercises (Siciliano & Hess, 1997) can also help students get used to the process and understand the benefits of comparing different points of views. Some possible exercises include:
- Show a picture for 15 seconds. Ask individual students to write all the details they remember, then compare and compile results as a team.
- Ask individual students to write the characteristics of a coin or bill, then compare and compile results as a team.
- Ask individual students to list characteristics an ideal team member would have, and then have the team compare results.
- Telephone Game - Ask one member to think of a message and whisper it to the person next to him. That person whispers to a third person next to him or her, until the last member. The last member restates what he or she heard aloud and the groups sees if it matches the original.
- Puzzle Exercise - Distribute one piece of a puzzle to each team member. The team works to solve the puzzle, but each team member may only physically touch and move his or her given piece. See the Puzzle PDF file available from the Penn State Schreyer Institute.
Naming Teams
Although it sounds trivial, encouraging students to name their teams is a good way to build a sense of common identity and team unity. Team names could be a number, a project name or something more lighthearted.
Working Outside of Class
If the course structure requires that students do team work outside of class, then make sure students are familiar with some tips for virtual teams and communicating online.
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References
See the Links Page for online resources on teams and icebreakers
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