designing a team charter
This was a group project involving myself and 2 other team members. We were tasked with coming up with a lesson plan focusing on aspects of Computer Supported Collaborative Learning. Each team member took the lead on different aspects of the project and were responsible for drafting our deliverable. The final outcome however required everyone to sign off and approve the content. The goal of this project was learning how to design and construct a learning environment focusing on using technology to facilitate group learning where team members were responsible to and for each other
COMPETENCIES DEMONSTRATED:
The focus of this task was to build skill in sequencing learning that required collaboration in a virtual enviornment. This lesson showcases the instructional design process, except for the analysis phase, emphasizing the use of online tools to further group knowledge.
Background |
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Our framework for designing a team charter was influenced by the work of Kreijins and Stahl arguing for the importance of the social factor in fostering a positive learning experience using CSCL. Based on this my team created a lesson for a group of students taking an organizational communications course. The students were expected to complete assignments focused on building strong communication skills that would culminate in making recommendations to enhance Sakai. The scope of our design was focused on creating the student's first assignment. We knew working as part of a virtual team could prove to be challenging and that building rapport quickly was key to success. Therefore, the lesson created was for the students to come up with a team charter to foster teamwork and establish ground rules for their working relationship. |
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Lesson Plan and Implementation |
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After designing our lesson, we had two other groups play the role of our students experiencing the lesson first hand. This allowed us to evaluate the efficacy of our learning plan and gather feedback for revisions. |
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Learner Evaluation |
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As the goal of our lesson was around building a strong team, the summative assessment tools we designed and implemented were not designed to test for knowledge transfer, rather they were to: |
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Lesson Evaluation |
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After the mock lessons were completed, the groups who played the role of our students were given an opportunity to provide us with feedback. This experience again highlighted for me how important it is to pilot and test your design prior to a full scale implementation. We found the feedback quite informative and enlightening. The module we created received full credit for our efforts. |
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Reflection |
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The process of learning about creating a computer supported collaborative learning environment was experiential in design. While learning about key concepts we experienced them first hand as part of a group working together to achieve a goal. In reflecting on how the lesson we designed worked for our learners, it was natural to think about how I was part of and contributed to a collaborative environment with my team.
In hindsight, it would have been nice to apply some of the concepts in the lesson we designed within our own group. For example, I would have liked to set ground rules with my teammates and have regular checkpoints regarding how we were working with each other. There were times when I felt a bit of underlying tension with people feeling like the distribution of labor was uneven or that they were not getting credit for behind the scene work. Another thing I would have incorporated was accountability. In our mock lesson, we made peer evaluations part of the student's grade and made it clear up front that their teammates would have a hand in their final assessment. I feel that this would have prevented some of issues with underperforming teammates. |
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references
Kreijins, K. et al. (2002). The Sociability of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning Environments
Stahl (2002).Contributions to a theoretical framework for CSCL. Processings of Computer Suppoerted Collaborative Learning