Hi Bernie,
It sounds like you have a very good approach to team bonding. Please
send me a list of what you do. Getting teams to bond is an area I
would like to improve on.
Frank Dinan at Canisius College in New York has a similar approach.
He teaches organic chemistry and has a different group of students
than you do, but he firmly believes in the value of time spent in
team bonding and orienting his students to the value of a team
approach to learning. I have attached a copy of his "First Day" article.

Paul
Paul C. King, Instructor
Massasoit Community College
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(H) 781-784-2195
On Jan 30, 2009, at 2:20 AM, bmillar wrote:
> Hi Sophie
> I understand your problem, and think I may have something for you
> to try.
>
> I teach at a South African University and am using TBL in very diverse
> groups - multicultural as well as multilingual. Although we have
> been a
> democracy for 15 years now, the legacy of apartheid lingers on and
> people
> are still racially divided.
>
> I mix the teams up colour-wise and strengths-wise. So, it may be
> that there
> will be white students from excellent schools in the same team as
> black
> students from disadvantaged township schools, EFL and EAL in the
> same team.
> These are people who would normally not even talk to each other.
>
> Therefore, the very important thing is to get the teams to bond, so
> I spend
> the first class, when they are in their brand new teams, entirely on
> ice-breakers and team-bonding exercises (I can let you have a list
> of what I
> do) that I find work very well. I invest time on teaching the teams
> what a
> team is, time-management in a team, conflict resolution, team roles
> that are
> swapped for every task to avoid social loafing and how to
> communicate using
> "I"-language. I do all this in a fun way so that there is a lot of
> laughter
> and enjoyment. At the same time I explain to the students what I
> doing and
> what they are learning in the process. I do all this right at the
> beginning
> of the course and have found that the teams gel and work very well
> after
> that for the entire term.
>
> I have used Prof. Dee Fink's taxonomy of significant learning to
> design my
> course, which contains the element of CARING. I go through the whole
> taxonomy and explain to the students what I am doing, what the
> course is
> about and why it is so different from the other courses they have.
> I pause
> at the Caring section of the taxonomy and we brainstorm what caring
> can mean
> and then I explain how we are going to make this a core value of
> each team
> coupled with the African philosophy of Ubuntu (caring). Then the
> teams do
> tasks where they are given scenarios where caring has to be applied
> and as a
> team they have to work out how to do this, e.g. a team member's
> mother has
> suddenly died, how will the team respond? This takes the team
> through a
> discussion of the different cultural approaches to death and
> mourning, and
> then they come up with an appropriate response that is caring in
> terms of
> that person's personal Discourse.
>
> This is time-consuming, but without getting the team to bond first,
> TBL
> would be, in my opinion, a meaningless exercise.
>
> I just want to share some of the comments made by my students in
> yesterday's
> first Information Literacy TBL class:
>
> "I really enjoyed class today. I actually thought it was an odd way of
> teaching but very effective".
> "...for the first time I gave feedback and spoke in front of the
> class, not
> being shy of what I wrote."
> "It was great to listen to the other student and what their dreams
> entailed.
> One realises not everyone is the same and there is always more to
> learn
> about one another."
> "Today's class was a pleasant surprise. It was fun getting to know
> group
> members a little better".
> "I thought the class was interesting and did well for team-
> building. I also
> didn't feel the need to fall asleep coz I was actually having fun!"
> "It was a new way of learning, experiencing other people and what
> they are
> interested in...We get to know each other and get comfortable
> around each
> other and their beliefs. It was nice to get to know other people from
> different groups and diversities. Time flies when you're having fun".
> "I am a natural introvert, so it's very hard for me to be
> interactive and do
> these kinds of activities, but as we began, I started warming up to
> the
> group and wanted to be a part...I didn't feel like I was exposed or
> forced
> to do something".
> "The dreaming exercise was a good starting point as everyone of us has
> dreams...realising once again we may not all be the same age, colour,
> gender, but we are made-up all the same. We all dream."
> "In today's class I really had fun learning about other people in
> my class,
> what they do and what kind of things they like e.g. clothes, food,
> music. I
> also loved talking about the different music that my group listen
> to cause
> there's other kinds of music that I didn't know about".
> "I was always tense in class coz I'm that someone with low self-
> esteem but
> after this class all that is gone. I'm a new person...I am proud of
> who I am
> and where I come from..."
>
> I think the comments above (there are many more in similar vein, not a
> single negative comment)indicate the value of spending time getting
> the team
> to bond and to break down barriers.
>
> Hope this helps a bit.
> Regards
> Bernie Millar
> Cape Peninsula University of Technology
> Bellville Campus
> Cape Town
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