Dear Rebecca,

       Thanks for your comments! One of our first attempts at a T-course involved students in an Organic Chemistry lab and a Cell and Molecular Biology (CMB) lab.  The students in CMB explored the effects of alcohol on the ability of planaria to regenerate. They "commissioned" alcohols from the OCHEM students, who then synthesized, purified and gave the alcohols to the CMB students. The CMB students then placed slices of planaria in the alcohols and observed the impact on regrowth.  The students met several times outside of lab to teach each other what they were learning/doing. The full team had to make a unified poster presentation at the end of the project.  Other examples we have used: Food and Nutrition students (diagnosing and providing nutritional information) with Theater students (role playing simulated patients); and Pharmacology (drug treatments of cockroaches) and Psychology (observation of behavioral changes in cockroaches); Geography and Analytical Chemistry students have worked in teams to collect and assess local water samples, with GEOG students identifying sites of potential concern, and the CHEM students analyzing the water samples; joint reports are generated. More information about IUP's Teamwork minor can be found here: https://www.iup.edu/team-leadership/undergrad/teamwork-communication-minor/

Cheers,

Anne 

Dear Holly,

    Thanks - that's a great idea.  Certainly the courses involved in water assessment are performing a public service, but I'm not sure it's cast that way, and probably should/could be.  The Teamwork minor has spread university-wide, beyond the sciences; there are some courses that likely incorporate service leaning anyway may develop teamwork courses around those projects.  Incorporating it explicitly in a science course is a great idea, and another way to achieve diversity.  I will forward your suggestion and Jay Labov's link (below) to our team members!

Cheers,

Anne

Dear Jay,

     Thank-you for your comments, and great suggestions.  I will forward your link to our team members.

Cheers,

Anne

Jay,
You wrote: Thus, my one question about this approach is how the STEM faculty view it. My concern is that it might be too easy for STEM faculty to think something like "I don't need to worry about helping students acquire these skills because they're getting them elsewhere." Without mutual reinforcement, students may see these as different sets of skills that are divorced from each other. Are you seeing that as a problem? If so, how are you addressing it?

Yes, we do see some STEM faculty who want to solely teach and promote their area of STEM. Many of them believe that their entire class/lab needs to focus entirely on technically rich content housed in a silo. Interestingly, these same faculty often have research that is discipline specific so the silo approach often encountered in academia, has worked for them. Yet, some of the most advancing science is conducted where multiple disciples merge and collaborations involving teams can make or break a company's bottom line. We can achieve mutual reinforcement through the core courses and the applied in major course, the teamwork-intensive course. As these are spread over the 4-years the student is with us, we hope that they start understanding the key processes that need to occur to form and work as teams.

Although we have a handful of co-presenters listed in this conference, we have nearly 40 faculty with around half in STEM fields and involved in our Teamwork-Intensive courses. Not all faculty or courses are included in our minor. Course proposals and their accompanying faculty must enter the university curriculum process and be approved to teach via a proposal that illustrates how the teamwork and communication objectives will be applied. These classes are in-major, required courses in various majors that include an interdisciplinary research project where students are expected to use their teamwork and leadership skills. We have seen students who have taken the Teamwork-Intensive class, both who are and who are not in the minor, realize in their third year the importance of these skills and how they need to be integrated along with their technical skills. (Interestingly, having an in major course that includes students who are not in the major facilitates much of what they will experience in the real world and provides an environment for them to use their skills to work with members who can be developed into effective team members).

The minor focuses more on teamwork skills rather than emphasizing leadership skills. Many academic programs boast that they prepare leaders for tomorrow, but our research has shown that employers seek employees with team member skills rather than leadership skills. At a recent advisory board meeting, I was asked why the team member focus. Most if not all BS-level graduates will assume an entry-level position where they will not initially be in a supervisory role. Even at graduate school, where there is an even larger skills gap, team member skills are critical not just while in graduate school, but also when leading your own project team.

The word leadership does not have to mean only positional leadership. One can use leadership skills in a variety of ways — for example, as a servant leader or in situational leadership. 

Dear Judith,

   Yes, thank-you for pointing this out. Leadership is an integral part of all teamwork, and can take many forms. The students are taught about its role in the early courses in the minor.  We include a full course on leadership later in the minor, in part so team members recognize the importance of both challenging and supporting the leader.  Employers told us in our surveys that they didn't want students fresh off their degrees assuming they would take leadership positions in chemistry labs - in other words, that they needed to be primarily team members until they had more work experience.

Cheers,

Anne

Dear James,

    Assessment of teamwork skills has been challenging. In early attempts, we asked students multiple choice questions - and found no difference between before and after team-work training, probably because the qualities to be a good team player are pretty intuitive. It's the application/execution of the skills that is that challenge.  We turned to reflection papers, and found these to be more informative, and also a learning experience for the students - the act of reflecting on their and their teams' behavior allowed them to identify their own contributions to problems and solutions.  As an assessment tool, though, reflection papers are not easy to grade.  We now have the students complete a short team task (which we video) and we assess the task using a rubric that focuses on their interactions. Using the rubric is faster than grading reflection papers, but requires some training, so that all analyzers apply it the same way.  

Cheers,

Anne

The rubric was based on The Teamwork Minor Learning Outcome Program Assessment Matrix provided by Dr. Beverly Davis, a consultant from Indiana University - Purdue University Indianapolis, and the Teamwork Value Rubric created by the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U). It was developed under the guidance of Dr. Mimi Benjamin and her graduate students Kevin Crawford and Katie Byers.

Ivory,
Thank you for your comments. Our project has been included as a highlight in our admission process. Our team comes to weekday and weekend events that are aimed at incoming freshmen to showcase the advantages our campus has that can make our students more marketable to either graduate schools or the workforce.
Parents at these events are more keen on the advantages of the minor and the skills that come with it. Students initially are mainly concerned with selecting a major, a residence hall, and a roommate. Students not in the minor, coming from high school, have only experienced group work and told it was teamwork.
We use the double dipping of credits (up to 12 credits of 18) to entice their interest. Our discussion started off much like our video.... in 4 years you will walk across the stage with a diploma, how do you differentiate yourself from others? The attainment of not just the theory, but actually using these skills in the field your being hired for is a great way!
We do have students in their 2nd year wanting to start the minor. It is easy from there to catch up, but sometimes these students can not utilize all of the double dipping. We are making a greater effort this year in mailers to incoming students before they come to summer orientation when they register for courses to help spread the word.

Judith,

We try early with our students to redefine the difference between group work and teamwork. Group work is completed by 2-4 students who have the same knowledge and skills, who do not need to rely on one another to complete a task or care about the people/process that the project takes. We all have experienced grading these types of projects: we are often asked to mediate a point of conflict or grade a patchwork type lab report written by many without a thought beyond an assigned portion of the work. Teamwork can only be fostered by forming a team with different skills and abilities that force them to communicate. Such communication is only successful if students can use their interpersonal skills to foster the entire process. Our teamwork-intensive courses typically span two disciplines in the student's junior year. These teams must communicate with each other to complete their project.
The teaching portion is completed in the first two years using the 4 core courses prior to the teamwork-intensive course. The core courses ask students to learn about themselves in relation to the topics of interpersonal skills, diversity, communication, and leadership. Within these courses, mainly group work is completed to simulate teamwork. I say group work because the students are all in the same course with mostly the same skills and abilities. The tasks used to simulate teamwork are focused on the content of the course. Yet, many topics are used in each including a team contract, team expectations, dealing with conflict, and self and team assessments.

James,
First, thank you for Driscoll! He is a great president.

We originally just had out teamwork-intensive courses where two courses would be paired to complete an interdisciplinary project. The nature of the student teams was such that no pair from either class could solve the project on their own and would need to communicate and work with all team members. To do this, it requires each member to use their interpersonal, communication, teamwork, and leadership skills. During this initial proof of concept, we found that teams would behave mostly like groups as they did not have an understanding of how to build a team. The second iteration of the proof of concept inserted too much material on how to function as a team that we sacrificed technical material, but the outcome of this was that students had less conflict, students illustrated key aspects of team behavior, and completed the semester believing that the teamwork portion of the project was as important that the outcome of the scientific research.

Our core courses in the minor all focus on topics including a team contract, team expectations, dealing with conflict, and self and team assessments. The inclusion of this material into general education requirements provides not just a way to ensure we cover the necessary technical material of our in major courses but also allows those fine arts and humanities faculty teach the skills from their disciplines making the general education requirements more applicable. With 15 of the 18 credits reinforcing these topics, we hope to see in the upcoming year that students are able to form their teams (via contract, expectations), normalize team processes (deal with conflict), and self-assess what is working for them and what might need to be adjusted.