TILT

Go Check Out Our New Resource for Supporting Students in Successfully Navigating Team Projects!!  

Developed for – and with undergraduate students – this online site makes use of digital resources and scholarship of learning in seriously fun ways to address this front page question:  HOW IS YOUR GROUP PROJECT LIKE THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE?

1. Your chances of survival increase if you work together.  Follow the steps to success for the strategies and tools to do that.
2. Your mission is very goal-oriented.  Use the tips and take-action steps to help your team create a high-quality project.
3. You can’t escape it!  Get ideas to prevent and deal with common problems.
4. You quickly need to determine everyone’s strengths.  Navigate to Step I to begin the process.

Developed by a team including CTLers Christina Petersen, Kate Martin, Jeff Lindgren, Chris Parker, Ellen Dy, and Kris Gorman – the site also will be a significant resource for instructors who incorporate team-based activities into courses as assessments of high-level learning.  For example, the Steps to Success section –

STEP 1: Agree on Team Roles
STEP 2: Agree on Team Policies
STEP 3: Identify All Tasks
STEP 4: Create a Plan
STEP 5: Assess Your Behaviors
STEP 6: Address Problems

– will engage teachers and learners in demystify team-related roles, practices, and responsibilities through a mix of graphical organizers, narrative details, scenario-based videos, and practical planning templates.

Also, the parallel Six Teamwork Myths section provides a precise and informative starting place for in-class conversations about how collaboration works, for addressing ways in which moving into good team work practices depends on unlearning bad group work practices students (and instructors) may have experienced.   Topics addressed in this section are:

1. Myth 1: Let’s Choose a Leader
2. Myth 2: We Don’t Need to Meet
3. Myth 3: Let’s Jump In and Stop Wasting Time
4. Myth 4: Since No One Disagrees, We All Agree
5. Myth 5: We’re One Big Happy Family
6. Myth 6: If You Don’t Participate, That’s Your Problem

The “home base” of the page – the Steps to Success section – crosslinks to forms and tools students can use, as well as to components of the Myths and Manage Conflicts sections.  And, for additional support, the design team provides a series of videos – developed with and acted out by local undergraduate students – on its own YouTube channel.  

Links

• Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse: Your Group Project – http://teamwork.umn.edu/
• YouTube Channel for Teamwork: Surviving Your Team Project – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdDY0-rhcvcb48h9_TCuN0g
• Four Teamwork Principles, Or What I Learned from Students, Colleagues, and the Literature – http://wp.me/p1Mdiu-Iw

Tags: April14, groups, team project, teams