Online teamwork and collaboration Video Lecture | Teach Online: A Comprehensive Approach for Teaching Online - Professional Skills

developing effective teamwork and
collaboration skills are considered
important in the student learning
process however many students find group
work challenging and difficult in this
episode we examine what constitutes good
online teamwork and how internet
technologies can help make it more
effective we also offer some strategies
for facilitating collaboration and
assessing group work
one of the most vexed areas of
university education is group work
students broadly speaking don't like it
they are brought up and enter University
on a very individually competitive basis
so when they're told to work with their
if you like competitors in a group it
can be very challenging showing people
the benefits of group work is is
difficult but think about what you do in
the real life context when you leave the
university and you're working in a in an
office you do that in groups you do that
in teams it's an authentic approach to
learning regardless of all the other
benefits that it might have so there's a
there's a movement at the moment to
think about how internet technologies
can make group work more effective
perhaps less time-consuming and maybe a
little bit more transparent or or fairer
to the students who are participating in
the group
I think the answer to how do you do good
teamwork and online learning is actually
the same as how do you do it face to
face you design appropriate tasks you
encourage the students to work together
you build assessment strategies that
show them the rewards and you explain to
them why teamwork is important what are
the types of things these students are
going to do in real life with the
knowledge they're learning in this
course try to plan for that type of
activity in your course using the online
affordances of the technology
trying to voice facial expressions body
language obviously they're dramatically
diminished in an online context and and
therefore that presents some
communication challenges you really have
to work with them online to get that
personality you have to learn where
those people come from where they're at
and what their abilities their skills
and experiences and how you are going to
fit in with them on the team the group
needs to bond they talk about into
subjectivity the idea that I'll give you
a bit about me you give me a bit about
you we've shared something we've become
so open and vulnerable and in that we
build trust by mentoring them and
responding to their questions and
queries will will will push them towards
working with each other in a more
collaborative way we couldn't force
students to collaborate but what we did
a strategy we did adopt was to try and
sort our groups based on those who were
more likely to collaborate what they
need I think is is nurturing through the
group building process because it's for
most limits it's a new experience
one of the the important things is is to
set up front how you're going to assess
these sorts of activities there's a
tremendous mythology of our group work
what about the group member who doesn't
do any work this will bring my marks
down it's not fair
one of the interesting things about some
internet technologies that can be used
for teamwork and there are many wiki's
blogs or specialist programs like Wiggio
or huddle they leave traces of what
individual members have done in a group
you might want to have students saying
well as an audit if you like this is
what I did and it might be that you want
to moderate those marks based on on that
sort of a feedback what we decided to do
was we give a a a percent a large
percentage of the mark to the group
which they all shared but on top of that
sufficient percentage of a mark to make
a difference and to make a difference
sufficient to push them up into the next
category and affirm a pass to a credit
creditor distinction and so on the more
work you do the more you'll be rewarded
and then the payoff for the other
students is that they're going to
benefit because the whole group will
also get a mark based on the extra
effort that these people have made
don't feel that it you know it's too
difficult it's really worthwhile that
you actually get groups working students
working as groups because it develops
their understanding in a social context
this is not an optional extra or some
way that academics have decided is an
easier way of getting out of marking or
something like that it's actually how
the real world works and that learning
to become a team member and still
produce good work is part of being at
University
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