DE Oracle @ UMUC

Best Practices for Successful Class Teams

CSI Staff

Staff Writer

Center for Support of Instruction

Published: May-June 2002

Category: » Online-pedagogy » Group-team-projects

These findings are based on interviews with UMUC Graduate School faculty members regarding effective use of teams in the WebTycho classroom and on survey results that were collected over two semesters from students in a Graduate School capstone class.

Students often find working in teams in their WebTycho classes to be challenging for a variety of reasons. When faculty plan properly and monitor the process carefully, however, students report that working in teams can be positive and rewarding. While not all the recommendations made here may apply to the class you teach, there are several proactive steps you can take to facilitate a successful class team experience for your students. We hope you find these suggestions useful and are able to adapt them when you plan, create, and manage your online class teams.

Communication

Excellent communication is critical in the online classroom. Faculty should provide students with clear, straightforward, specific instructions regarding their expectations for successful completion of the team assignment. Since team membership entails an extremely high degree of commitment, cooperation, and time on the students' part, faculty directions should include the assignment's objectives, required components, and a time frame for completion. This enables students to plan and manage their time effectively.

Team Size

According to both faculty and students, teams comprised of four to six students each are the most successful. Limiting teams to a maximum of six participants each seems to promote better overall internal communication, organization, consensus building, and scheduling. Teams with fewer than four members, however, suffer in the event that an individual student withdraws or doesn't participate fully.

Team Selection

In introductory and early program classes where students may need more guidance and direction, faculty should probably assign students to teams. Student in more advanced classes, however, may prefer to select their own groups. Faculty can facilitate this process by providing information and a forum to help students select appropriate teams based on background knowledge, skills, and previous experience. For example, students in a capstone class were asked to rate themselves on 10 criteria ranging from communication skills to programming experience with comments to support the rating. The students posted their results in a conference where team leaders reviewed them. Team leaders then contacted those students whose backgrounds best matched the needs of the team.

Team Bonding

Once formed, teams need to bond. At the start of the semester, after late registration ends and team membership becomes stable, faculty can promote strong team organization and bonding by assigning short exercises due in a brief time period with small risk of failure. For example, to help teams establish their group identities and dynamics with little consequence to their grades, faculty may assign team members to post a team web page due one week hence that counts for 5% of the overall grade.

Team Roles

Likewise, teams need to establish team roles early on to define areas of responsibility and to distribute workload evenly. Again, faculty can support team development by designing short group activities that require establishing team roles. For example, faculty may assign teams to write brief position descriptions for each member due in a week that count for 5% of the overall grade.

Team Bylaws

Faculty should also encourage teams to write bylaws. Bylaws serve to formalize individual rights and responsibilities in the group as well as to document the consequences of noncompliance. Faculty may want to provide teams with guidelines or sample bylaws. Once bylaws are established, if a problem arises, faculty can direct students back to their own bylaws for a resolution. In the event that a group can't reach consensus, however, faculty may choose to step in and expedite the process by arbitration.

Team Record-Keeping

To avoid potential misunderstandings among team members, faculty should ensure that teams establish record-keeping procedures to capture information shared and decisions made during meetings and other interactions. Maintaining a record of team activity minimizes confusion, promotes momentum, and helps individual team members to stay focused, organized, and on track. For example, faculty should encourage team members to use WebTycho's Study Group Conference area to post meeting information including purpose, agenda, and action items.

Student to Student Feedback

One way faculty get a handle on how well a team is functioning is to assign student to student feedback. While many students value feedback on their work provided by their peers, student to student feedback can sometimes be misinterpreted by the recipient or unintentionally hurtful. To avoid any potential problems, faculty should communicate guidelines to team members establishing appropriate parameters for student to student feedback. In addition to requiring that all feedback be constructive, faculty may insist that all assertions be supported by specific examples and/or that categories of individual participation be rated on an established scale. Faculty may also encourage constructive student to student feedback by allocating some of the grade based on the feedback's quality and timeliness.