Getting to Know You

Faculty Instruction for Unique Similarities

Summary:

When a team is being formed it is important for members to get to know each other quickly. The teams for the project are chosen, then in a small group interactive session the team members will discuss each other's similarities.

Goals:

• To help the students to move from Polite Conversation to Skillful Discussion rapidly
• To support interaction amongst the teams
• To have students begin to analyze effective components of interaction between team members

Teaching Strategy:

Small group interactive discussions are used in teams of three or more students. Instructor and TA's facilitate the discussion. The exercise is started in class and then finished on the web and submitted. The TA and instructor help those students who are shy and need support. The exercise can be done outside of class. If conducted outside of class, the students will perform the exercise and then submit their similarities to the Instructor or the TA for compilation with the other teams via an e-mail address.

Procedure:

Tell students the rules, explain that they will need to record their results, and remind them to put their Team Number on the sheet or form the web and send it electronically.

Rules:

1. Pick a Team Leader. The Team Leader will facilitate the exercise.
2. Pick a Recorder.
3. The recorder will record the results and e-mail them to ________________.
4. Talk with each other and find facts about each of you that are similar. The goal is to be the team that finds the most unique similarities.
5. The similarities must be amongst all of you
6. The similarities must come from your lives before you came to MIT
7. Only those similarities that are unique to one team will be counted. If another team comes up with the same similarity it will be discounted for both.
8. Visible common traits will not count
9. Preferences will not count
10. You may use whatever tools and techniques you deem appropriate

Instructor:

Tasks:

3 minutes: Explain and break down into groups

10 minutes: Team members will discuss similarities.

5 minutes: Teams give feedback on the obstacles they encountered coming up with their similarities

Teaching Assistants Participation:

• Circulate around the room, answering questions to clear up any confusion.
• Help the team discussions to get started and collect the team's responses.
• Score the sheets and provide the class with a list of the most unique responses from each of the teams.
• Announce the winning team at the next class meeting and go over some of the more unique similarities from all the teams with the class for about two minutes.

Background Information:

In the forming of any team, trusting each other is a major component of any high performing team. As Teaching Assistant or Instructor, part of your responsibility is to help the students to break the ice and support the team members in trusting one another and openly discussing their skills and abilities as rapidly as possible.

Your job is to provide effective and constructive opportunities for team members to collaborate and get to know each other. When a team is first formed many factors must be considered. You should begin to personally become aware of each team member's way of interacting:

• How do they collaborate with others?
• How do they work and learn?
• How do they think?
• What types of power do they use to maneuver?
• How do they lead?
• How do they handle conflict?
• Can they negotiate successfully?
• Are they effective communicators?

Polite conversation is how a team begins conversing with one another. In order to make a team more effective and create an atmosphere of trust the team needs to move from polite conversation into skillful conversation while carrying out the project.

Examples of polite conversation behaviors:

• one team member may hesitate and be quiet during the session
• one team member never looked at any of the others directly
• the session was fifteen minutes long and during this period the team member never spoke, although there were several opportunities