Week 4 Mini Session Overview - Your Tasks

Facilitating Online Teams – Team in Trouble Case Study

Introduction

During week 4, you will analyze a case study involving a team of online learners that is experiencing some difficulties. Working with your colour team, you will have an opportunity to learn how others may interpret and deal with conflict among teams of students and to develop an action plan to address the conflict in the case study.

Learning Outcomes:

At the end of this activity you will be able to:

1. Work effectively with groups online (including recognizing group dynamics, and identifying opportunities to prevent or manage group conflict)
2. Use appropriate strategies and tools to establish and maintain instructor presence, and support learning and community goals
3. Recognize and assess community-building elements and strategies in the design of online learning activities and courses

Activity Instructions and Guidelines

• For this week’s activity, you will be working in your colour teams (Orange, Purple and Green). There are 4 tasks that you will need to complete for this activity, with one optional task.  Each task has a suggested timeline, but your team can plan its own schedule that works for everyone.
• If you would like help with creating a communication tool for your team to use or have questions about what to do, please make your request or post your comments in the week 4 mini session support forum. We will monitor this forum on a daily basis, and there will be “office-cloud” hours on 1000-1200 PST on Wednesday and 1800-2000 PST on Friday.

Task 1 – Watch Video (complete individually by Tuesday evening)

• After reviewing week 4 reading materials, watch this
  . Keep these questions in mind while you are watching.
  • As an instructor, how do you facilitate team responsibility?
  • When and how would you intervene in a team having problems?
  • What types of intervention can be effective?

Task 2– Case Study (complete individually by Tuesday evening)

• Carefully read the Case Study from the perspective of the instructor for the course. To guide your thinking and prepare you for the final task, consider the following questions: 

1. What are the critical issues in this case? Some of these may be obvious, but others may be more subtle. Think about the possible issues from the perspectives of the students as well.
2. What is your assessment of the situation?
3. What actions or strategies would you take to manage the conflict without taking over?
4. What are the possible implications of your actions or strategies to:

• • The students
  • You, as the instructor
  • Designing and assessing online group activities.

• Compose an initial intervention message that you would send to the team or individual members of the team in response to what you have seen in the case so far. Share this message with the other members of your colour team by posting your individual responses to your team colour thread in the week 4 discussion forum.

Task 3 – Role-playing (complete with your team by Friday evening)

• To consider more deeply the possible responses to your initial intervention messages, read the intervention messages composed by each of your colour team members and  imagine how you, as a student might respond to them.  Due to the time constraints, we have assigned student roles: 

• Write and post your “student” response to each of your team member’s initial intervention message by replying to their posts.

Task 4 – Action Plan (complete with your team by Saturday evening)

• As a team, create an action plan for addressing the team conflict in the case study. Your action plan should:

1. Identify the critical issues in this case for you as an instructor.
2. Outline the steps or course of action to address the conflict. Think intervention strategies.
3. Explain why your team chose these steps or intervention strategies and what results you hope to see from them.
4. Identify some possible implications of your action plan to?

• • Students
  • You as the instructor
  • Designing and assessing online group activities. 

• Post your team’s action plan in the action plan thread in the forum, colour coded by your team colour.
• Compare your team’s action plan with that of other teams.

Task 5 – Journal Prompt (Optional)

• If you choose, you can use this case study activity as a prompt for your Journal entry this week by reflecting on your experience working with your team. To get you started, think about:
  • What role did you play in the group? How did this happen?
  • What were the dynamics of the group? Was there conflict or did agreement and decisions come easily?
  • What did you learn working with your group?