Assessing+Student+Readiness+for+Group+Work

Over the years I have met with faculty who have had bad experiences working with groups in their classes. Either there emerged personal conflicts between/among team members that impacted the team’s work, or the project was not completed in a timely way, or the results of a completed project were unsatisfactory. All of these situations can be mitigated with a bit of preparation work and the creation of an online atmosphere that is conducive to the [|social dynamics of teamwork]. The first step to project success is to [|put together successful teams]. Over the years, I have learned that there are **process** people and there are **results** people. You need a healthy dose of each in a group, but putting all process people together spells disaster (they will never complete), and putting all results people together means that they are done before they even begin. So the first thing to do is to find out who your students are as team players. The first set of diagnostic tools deal with the foundational stones of teamwork and the results will permit you to form successful teams: The second set of diagnostic tools deal with student learning styles. When you explain something to a person sitting in front of you, do they respond with “I see what you mean” (visual person), “I hear you” (auditory person), or “I grasp that” (kinesthetic person)? It’s amazing to me how people identify their learning styles through their language, if we but understand the full import of how they are receiving the information that we proffer. When creating a successful team, it is important to minimize frustration by putting together people with **different** learning styles. The visual person will be able to “see” the end result, the kinesthetic person will be “task driven,” and the auditory person keeps a proverbial “ear to the ground” and is the risk assessor. Here are some diagnostic models for your consideration: As you begin to think about using these ideas and instruments, begin exploring the **survey feature** of Blackboard. When you go into any of the **Content Areas,** you will see a **drop-down box on the right-hand side of your screen. **Select **Survey** from the menu. Use the **Create** feature to launch the wizard. Name your survey, describe what you wish to survey, give instructions for completion, and click Submit. On the next screen, you will have the choice of several types of questions. The results of your survey will be found in the Gradebook as an ungraded item. Those of you who wish to be more adventurous with this process may want to explore Survey Solutions with me. Please contact me offline at Sylvie.richards@mail.cuny.edu to pursue this solution. Once we have an idea of who are students are, the fun part begins. I suggest that project/learning teams always be organized with odd-number participants (you need someone to break a tie!). Three is a good number for a team engaged in a multi-task project – small enough to get things done, large enough to spread the tasks. I don’t recommend that you have teams larger than five people. Decision-making becomes difficult the larger the group (consider the 9-member Supreme Court). And even-numbered teams require consensus-building to reach agreement (consider juries of 12 people) – often difficult to achieve face-to-face, even more difficult asynchronously.
 * ASSESSING STUDENT READINESS FOR GROUP WORK **
 * [|Communication styles]
 * [|Interpersonal competence]
 * [|Relational Development]
 * [|Perception and listening]
 * [|Learning Styles Inventory]
 * [|A Description of Learning Styles]
 * [|Self-Assessment Questionnaire]