Prior to beginning the research required for a team assignment, determine your team’s goals and tasks collectively. Below are suggested steps for you to follow:
Carefully look over your assignment information and evaluation criteria as that is where you will find the assignment deadline which will frame your schedule and the criteria for the assignment.
Once you have understood your team assignment, determine the specific goals/tasks that you will collectively need to do and the deadlines for each.
Example: Goal 1 – Find a certain number of useful scholarly resources by a certain date.
When determining the deadlines for each goal/task make sure to discuss with all team members to ensure there aren’t any conflicts.
Example: Don’t plan a deadline on the same date that a team member may have a midterm unless the team member is okay with this.
When setting the deadlines for goals/tasks, allow time for team feedback and a revisions cycle.
Once you have determined the goals/tasks and their corresponding deadlines, set up times for your group to meet either in person or online or confirm that you will be communicating asynchronously (through WebCT Vista discussion boards or e-mail). Again, take into account everyone’s schedule if you are arranging for in-person or synchronous online meetings (e.g., real-time chat).
Every member should listen to each team member’s opinion even if you may disagree with certain ideas. When there is disagreement, you can take the opportunity to reflect and critically explore the issue (Hargreaves, 2007). Rather than looking at the disagreement negatively, embrace it and try to work with your team members to come up with compromised agreement.
Throughout the process of the assignment, you and your team members should continuously update one another. If at anytime, you feel that you are running behind or unable to meet a deadline, let your peers know so they can help you or adjust task deadlines if necessary. However, keep in mind that your team depends on your involvement to complete the assignment on time so make sure to contribute your share as much as possible. Furthermore, if your instructor assigns a peer evaluation, your team members will evaluate your contribution to the team assignment.
Plan
Once you have established the goals/tasks and corresponding deadlines, equally distribute the responsibilities of each team member clearly. Make sure that each team member understands their task and is comfortable with the associated deadline. Depending on the number of tasks and the number of people in your group, some team members may work on a task together while others may work on a task individually.
Before determining each team member’s task, share your strengths and weaknesses with one another. For example, one person may be very good at editing while another member may be very good at finding resources. Knowing each other’s strengths will help you know who to contact if you need help with something. For example, if you are not sure how to search for scholarly resources contact your team member who has had experience in this area. Team members with different abilities can help one another giving the opportunity to learn from one another (Rau & Heyl, 1990).
Divide tasks equally amongst your team members. For example, one person should not be responsible for doing all the researching, another responsible for all the writing, and one personfocused on the editing. A better approach would be to allow each member to have a share of the work at each stage.
However, it is recommended to assign one person to review the final paper at the end so one voice is maintained throughout the essay and formatting is consistent.
Connect with your Team
You should know how to connect with your team members outside of class. The best place to exchange ideas is either meeting regularly in person or online or using the discussion board topic set up for your particular team, allowing the team members to read or contribute to the discussion topic at their own time of convenience. Your discussion topic is confidential to only your team, your instructor, and the teaching assistants for the course. An advantage to using the discussion board topic is that your instructor and teaching assistants will see which team members are actively contributing ideas and which are less engaged. Hence, if there was a dispute over team members’ involvement, your instructor and teaching assistants can refer to the discussion board to determine how to handle the issue. You can also attach versions of your written team assignment or useful resources to discussion board postings.
You can use the discussion board topic to arrange times to meet synchronously with your team members. You can meet in person or you can meet online using Google chat, Skype or the chat room available in your WebCT Vista course if it is setup by your instructor.
Choose a team leader
The team leader’s responsibility is to coordinate the team members’ activitiesandorganization of the project.
You may select your team leader by voting or through first impressions (it may be possible that the first time your team meets, one member especially stands out and is already demonstrating leadership qualities).
Select someone who you feel that will help bring the team together (e.g. ensure deadlines are met, everyone is working collaboratively and there are no discrepancies between members).
Stay Involved
Let your team members know if you do not understand something so they can help clarify it for you.
Example: Sometimes team members may feel shy about asking questions or indicating that they do not understand the assignment or their task. You and/or the team leader should check in with everyone to make sure they are comfortable with their task and make sure there isn’t any confusion.
Keep a record of the literature you used in the assignment in order to make a collective bibliography or reference list at the end.
Speak Up!
You should speak up and let your team members know if there is something you feel uncomfortable about or disagree on. All team members should support the decisions made – if you do not agree with the team’s decision, then let everyone know early so you can you can sort out differences. These discussions are beneficial to bounce around ideas and learn from one another.
