Group Projects
Introduction
Rob Peterson asks about cutting-edge methods for holding team members accountable
INTEREST CATEGORY: TEACHING AND LEARNING
POSTING TYPE: Dialog
Author: Robert M. Peterson
What are cutting-edge methods for holding team members accountable?
I foolishly assumed folks in a graduate asynchronous intensive 8-week course would kick in the front door with motivation. Not so. While this first-time course was highly successful (per evals), the #1 thing to improve was team effort and contribution.
In this course, the team does a weekly video presentation on a case I created that builds each week. The videos are 3-8 mins long depending on the assignment, all must appear. Some members don’t respond in a timely manner to the group, some show up with zero done (rare cases), or they try to independently put together the video and it does not hold together well, or it runs over time requirements, and they get hammered by the professor.
I needed to adjudicate a couple team issues, one member had to seek a different group after Week 1. I let students self-select their 2-3 person team. Some knew each other, some did not. In the end the students said random assignment might have been better. Ouch.
I did not have a team eval, nor a % of their grade associated with this element. I will now, but what have you found that works? Should there be a simple weekly link that has them own their own and team productivity? Perhaps 100 points that gets distributed. Overkill?
What have you found effective, either via better structure or team evals?
Thanks,
Rob
Robert M. Peterson, Ph.D.
Distinguished Professor of Sales
Editor,
Dept. of Marketing – Northern Illinois University – DeKalb, IL 60115-2897
peterson@niu.edu – 815.753.6224