> Dennis Byrnes wrote:
>
> One of the objectives of our new general education plan is
> to help students learn how to work collaboratively in teams.
> Here the objective is small group work and we're looking for
> the right context to teach it. It seems to be the complement
> of your question. This competency is, in part, suggested by
> surveys by our College of Management that suggest employers
> are looking for employees who are skilled in working in
> groups.
We have a gen ed course titled "Small Group Behavior", in which students
learn two interaction models: the "Task-oriented model" and the
"interpersonal model". Most of the work is done on the former model.
Students face a variety of real-life tasks (e.g., select someone to hire
from a number of applicants), work on the tasks in small groups, then
self-assess and peer assess per the behaviors described in the models (e.g.,
"Information Giving", "Challenging", "Clarifying"). They do some of the
self- and peer-assessment by watching videotapes of their interactions.
The students also practice _the same skills_ in other course contexts. For
example, I just finished assessing my students' social interaction
self-assessments from my introductory level research course. The students
worked in small groups to write survey questions to be used in the
semester-long survey our class will conduct. After the task, they wrote
self-assessments using the behaviors they'd learned in the Small Group
Behavior class. For example, one student writes,
"During the group discussion I contributed in many ways. I was often
information seeking when it came to how an answer was to be worded or be
left open-ended. For example, we were going to provide a scenario and leave
a line for how the person answering would respond to the question. I brought
up how would we put that into the computer"
Another writes,
"I mediated between individuals in order to assist them in clarifying their
points. I also challenged others to specify certain ideas".
"Information seeking", "mediating", and "challenging" are all behaviors
discussed in the Task Oriented Model. As you can see, the students readily
transfer these behaviors to other contexts. I did not teach them in my
class, and in fact I am less familiar with the model than are the students
(I've never taught Small Group Behavior, though I did edit the model
description document).
It takes a leap of faith on my part to depend on the students to
self-assess in these specific ways rather than just "I was a good
participant and talked a lot". So far my faith has been rewarded - the
students are aware of what they're doing and why they're doing it even in a
different context from that in which learning took place.
Paul Smith
Alverno College
Milwaukee
