Our students are used to competition to progress in learning. Unfortunately, competition defies team-based collaboration; we need to change our students’ minds to help them achieve! While reviewing elements of collaboration, you will engage in simple but effective activities to demonstrate the value of collaboration in problem-solving and teamwork.
As educators, we must constantly be aware of the needs of our learners, adapting our approach(es) to achieve the objectives we are targeting. Unfortunately, not all students learn the same way, making the task even more complex. Typically, complexity in education involves additional costs, demanding of us the articulate advocacy for the expenses that seem to inevitably be associated with change. In a time of challenging budgets and restricted resources, those sorts of tasks can be daunting and discouraging. What if you were to try out some of these techniques and approaches, and gain confidence that when you go home, you can utilize these strategies immediately? What if you could awaken your learners through engagement and interaction, helping them acquire essential skills for the work on teams that they will inevitably face—but without busting the budget?
In It’s the Name of the Game: Team-based Collaboration in Low-Fidelity Simulation, we will learn using very simple tools that are effective but won’t consume a lot of additional, precious resources! Low-fidelity simulation parallels real life situations with simpler, lower risk events that allow you and your learners to experiment more, increasing the likelihood of change. If you don’t succeed at these activities, nobody will question you or your abilities in your chosen field, as the tasks themselves are of little consequence. What happens, however, is you are freed to experiment, rethink, and change both your perceptions and your processes. Solutions you may never have utilized before may appear as the best possible outcome for you and your team! For pre-professionals, this means learning skills in teamwork that will be tested on board exams. For all of the rest of us, we need to be competent and confident in our knowledge of how teams work and how to work on teams.
You will interact in a newly formed team by participating in three different activities, each and all of which illuminate and illustrate collaborative teamwork without the tedium of one-directional lectures or readings. Learners will be teaching one another about how teams work best, first by learning a common model or language for understanding collaboration through an interactive game that is familiar in format, but that challenges the acquisition of a structured vocabulary for use among team members. In short, when you learn the language of collaboration, you can speak about it in ways that others can understand. This is essential for team members to effectively communicate and optimizes their performance. Additionally, as in all dynamic teams, participants are learning about one another, from one another, and with one another, echoing the World Health Organization’s strategy for building teams that function effectively across barriers of knowledge, experience, and even professional expertise.
In the second activity, you will again use readily available assets by temporarily restructuring a commercial game to fit the needs of our teams as you learn about the distribution of resources. The method of engaged learning gets you on your feet to problem-solve with one another—but be prepared! Educational engagement involves interactions and conversations, and you may begin to notice what learning sounds like! While solutions are hidden in plain sight, you may be required to rethink what you thought you knew, and change your behaviors to succeed. Unlike lecture-based learning where one voice dominates the conversation, you will discover that engaged learning of this type brings out a fresh excitement and energy.
Our third activity broadens our focus to those behaviors that impact even more diverse communities, and demands that we negotiate solutions that are satisfying to each of us. Collaboration is, after all, when I am as committed to what you seek as an outcome as I am to my own needs. It isn’t the same as compromise, where both you and I give and take a little, but nobody gets fully what they want. Collaboration is the state in a team where everyone wins, and each of us must be more committed to that outcome than our own needs, wants, and desires. It is achievable; it may be elusive until every team member understands the commitment and develops trust that others will respond accordingly. This requires personal investment of every player. In collaboration, nobody sits on the sidelines!
As an attendee, you will handle and experience the simple tools that can facilitate learning in your classroom. Through your direct involvement in the activities, you will take your lesson and your learners beyond the basics of knowledge acquisition. You will instead have learned what simple tools can do, and more importantly, what can be accomplished with their application. The results are immediate: go back to your students and teach them by helping them teach one another. Adapt the concepts here with tools that you may have readily available but are seeing for the first time!
Our objectives for this workshop include:
As a result of fully participating in this workshop the learners should be able to:
- Repeat, explain, and recognize words and processes related to collaboration that can be applied to group experiences to enhance the probability of positive outcomes.
- Question and test strategies of collaborative work on teams that enrich the experiences and knowledge of learners.
- Assess and respond to a challenging problem from the perspective of a collaborative team rather than through typical individual or isolated viewpoints.
We are hoping that you will join us to experience and learn about this interactive and interdependent teaching method, designed for application directly in your situation with minimal preparation or doubt. You can do this!
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