As health care professional Team Formation Models in Nursing Education and Group to Team Building is a necessary professional skill. There is a vast difference in a working group and team discussed in this blog post.
Team Formation Models in Nursing Education and Group to Team Building
Through team-based learning (TBL), students learn how to use the power of the team to enhance their learning. It teaches the value of teamwork for their future as health care professionals. But teamwork does not just happen—great thought and effort must be made by the instructor to develop and maintain teams so that they work efficiently and effectively.
Formation of teams is one of the most important first steps in getting TBL to work in your class. So what do we want the team to be and how does the formation of the team affect this? We want each team to be a well-working unit that is capable of going through the exercises in an efficient and successful manner and that allows everyone within the team to learn, understand, and apply the concepts being studied. We also want all of the teams to be successful.
Some teams may perform better than others, but for the most part, the difference in performance between the top-performing and the bottom performing team should not be great. This is accomplished by making sure that there is good distribution of the resources found in the students: background, experiences, course work, previous training.
Three Methods For Team Training
How one creates the teams depends upon many factors: size of class, goals of the course, how diverse or homogeneous the students are, the values of the profession and the institution. The instructor determines what resources are important to be spread across all the teams. Here are three approaches to team formation based on what is considered most important for resource distribution. The two most important things to do with team formation are:
(a) don’t allow them to pick
(b) keep the process transparent
Making Most Assignments Ahead of the First Class Based on Course Objectives and Knowledge of Demographic Variables
Sample: An undergraduate course in nursing titled Ethics in Practice; 75 students in their senior year A basic demographic questionnaire is sent to the enrollees before the first class, and the following information is returned: average age is 21, 60 are female, all have had one year of closely supervised inpatient care of patients, some have had previous work experience in the health care field.
In addition to all students speaking English, about one-third speak Spanish fluently, and several speak one or another language of south east Asia. Fifty students identify themselves as Caucasian. About 15 students are parents of young children and 5 students have grown children.
The instructor feels strongly that one of the most important learning objectives of the course is for future nurses to recognize that people from different cultural/ethnic/language/racial backgrounds have very different perspectives on what defines ethical behavior and how decisions that involve life and death are affected by the values of these back grounds.
How should the students be assigned to teams? One approach would be to inform the class at the first session that based upon the demographic information submitted and the course objectives, assignments to teams have been made to distribute students who speak a second language fluently and have children. So, the instructor creates 12 teams and assigns at least two students to each team who speak a second language and makes sure each team has at least one student who is a parent.
The instructor may consider distributing the male students equally, but it would probably be more important that no more than a couple of male students were in any one team. If, after all the students are sitting with their teams, there is a team that has several African American students, then further distribution could be made.
Taking the time ahead of class to assign students to teams and then once in the class making the final distribution based on very clearly stated criteria will reassure students that the assignments have not been arbitrary or based on factors not important to their learning the most about ethical decision making.
A good Application Exercise question later in the course could ask about the influence of a cultural/ethnic/language background upon the ethical decision-making process; the whole class would have had a unique set of experiences just from the TBL during the course.
Using a Random Approach to Assignment
Sample: A year-long course on pathophysiology for medical students; 100 students, about one-half female A medical school instructor knows that most enrollees are highly qualified academically, many have had research, EMT, hospital, or other health-related experiences, and most are recent graduates of college.
It would be highly cumbersome to identify any particular variable or set of variables that could make a substantial difference in how any one of the resulting 16 teams will perform in this particular subject matter.
Therefore, why not assign teams based on something like the students’ geo graphic location of birth? With the whole class present on the first day of the class, the instructor would ask for the student born closest to the location of the classroom to come forward. The student, most likely quite embarrassed, would come forward and stand next to the instructor. Then the instructor tells the class to spend the next 10 minutes figuring out who was born where, and line up in sequence around the room.
The next 10 minutes are noisy and energized as students discover their place of birth. Then the instructor tells the line of students to count off to 16 and repeat, informing them that the number they quote is their team number. This approach works especially well with a group of students who are just getting to know one another and where the educational atmosphere is one of collaboration and not competition.
They love the fate assignments because they ensure that each of the team members is from a different place. It also becomes an important message about the fact that often in life one has to learn how to work with whatever group of individuals one is given.
Distributing a Wealth Item
Sample: A first-year course in biochemistry for veterinary students; 100 students Since the competition for veterinary school is so stiff, many aspiring veterinarians acquire advanced degrees (master’s, doctorate) in one or another disciplines, such as biochemistry, anatomy, genetics, toxicology, or physiology, in order to improve their chances of getting accepted.
For a rigorous course in biochemistry that uses TBL as its strategy, it would be important to make sure that students with advanced degrees in biochemistry are equally distributed to the teams across the class. Therefore, at the first class, the instructor could cull those with advanced degrees and distribute them to the teams created by random assignment as described above. Again, keeping the reasoning for this process entirely transparent to all students will help ensure that the students buy in to the fact that the teams were created fairly.
Developing A Group Of People Into A Team
Now that the students have been distributed into teams, have you really formed teams? I would argue that you are only halfway there. The formation of a team really is not just the assignment. At that first class, an important and evolutionary process will begin as the students assess one another’s personality and approach to working with others. Shy and reticent students will not know whether they can toughen those students who are more forward.
Those who are more outspoken may think that they will just continue to lead and direct as they always have done. But, in a very short time, especially after feedback on Readiness Assurance Tests and some sharing of feedback on teamwork within the team, all begin to make changes. It is generally agreed that it takes at least four to five, if not more, working sessions for a small group of people to evolve into a team. Of course, what is happening during this evolution is that the team members are getting to know each other.
They are learning that each member of the team, if he or she works at it, can bring importance so many insights, ideas, and solutions to bear on the problems the team must solve to be successful. This is rarely a conscious process in any team member. Some instructors may feel the need to offer instruction in teamwork, or describe how teams generally evolve (forming, storming, norming, etc. [ Tuckman , 1965]), but it is my experience that this is not necessary.
Because of the strategy, with its incentives for collaboration and accountability, students learn more about teamwork than what could ever be taught. If you don’t believe this, then when you do try TBL, sit down with a team or two after the class gets going and ask what they have learned about working with each other, and what they see as the value of working this way.
Even early in a course, they have caught on and appreciated the process. The longer they work together as teams, however, the more robust their enthusiasm will be. What will best help transform a group of students into a powerful learning team? The team must be challenged at an intellectual level that fosters their collaboration. If the exercises are too simple, the team does not need to work together to be successful .
If the exercises are too difficult, even though the team attempts to work together, they will become demoralized and claim that you are not teaching. Another important issue for the evolution of the team is timely feedback. As teams are just forming, it is very important that the instructor gives feedback on how well the team is performing.
The strategy, when followed, ensures this since feedback episodes should occur several times during a TBL session. Also of note, the instructor should know how well the students are learning at several points during the TBL session—something that cannot happen during a lecture.
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