I have to agree with Bruffee who said that “education is not a process of assimilating the truth but a process of learning to take in hand what is going on by joining the conversation of humankind...collaborative learning is an arena in which students can negotiate their way into the conversation.” I use student teams as a means by which to get students involved in a conversation with each other and myself so that we can successfully tackle the course objectives together over the period of a semester. I have also learned that student teams must be monitored and nurtured so that the conversation between them and me does not turn sour.
One of the main reasons that I monitor and nurture student teams is due to my awareness of the team learning curve (developed by Katzenback & Smith, in their book the Wisdom of Teams). The team learning curve looks very much like a 4-ounce ladle from the side, with the handle pointing at a 45-degree handle to the right. The learning curve illustrates that teams go through the stages of working group, to a pseudo-team, to a potential team, to a real team, and on to a high performing team. As teams move from one stage to the next there is a corresponding level of performance in that team performance actually gets worse before it gets better. At the working group stage (the left hand lip of the ladle), there is a basic level of performance as people begin to work together to accomplish tasks. The performance of the team actually gets worse at the pseudo-team stage (the bottom of the ladle) as members begin to trust more in each other and shape a common purpose. At the potential team stage there is a growing harmony among the team and their performance equals that of when they were at the working group stage. When members truly begin to trust in each other and genuinely care about the success or failure of teammates, they move to real team status (halfway up on the handle of the ladle) and find that their performance is consistently better than at any other time in the past. The final transition is to that of a high performance team; this stage is depicted at the high end of the curve (or tip of handle) and is when the team is at its peak performance. A high performing team is one that consists of members who are deeply committed to one another’s personal growth and success, they not only outperform their previous efforts but those of other teams who are in the early stages of the team learning curve.
One of the ways in which I monitor and nurture student teams to make the transition to high performing teams is through regularly scheduled meetings with team leaders. I conduct these meetings with 15 minutes remaining in the class after I have dismissed the rest of the students. These meetings are important because I have found that teams do not necessarily move in a neat and logical sequence from one stage to the next along the team learning curve; it is important to determine where the teams may be on the learning curve and find ways to get (and then keep) them at the level of a high performing team. For example, some teams make the transition to a high performing team in no time at all--the challenge for them and me is to keep them at that stage. Some teams make it to a pseudo-team and get frustrated because their performance gets worse the harder they try to work together--the challenge is to find ways to help them make the transition to a real, or high performing team so that their conversation and performance will improve. Oddly enough, each class also has the mystery team; this is the team that never evolves to even the working group stage and lags behind the rest of the class the entire semester (this is also the team that keeps me awake at night trying to figure ways to move them along the curve).
In conclusion, teams are like people, they all do not learn at the same rate. This also holds true for teams, some come together quickly and become high performing teams overnight, others do not. Having regularly scheduled meetings with team leaders will help to identify where a team is on the learning curve and get them to make the transition to high performing teams. In this way, the students and the instructor can work together so that all are successful in mastering the course materials over the course of the semester.
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