8 June - 14 June

Kia ora 8C1, for the last three weeks of this term we are going to really work on our teamwork and collaboration skills. This should allow us to achieve great things next term because they are precisely the skills you need to accomplish substantial learning about the social world, both globally and locally.

This means there is no assessment planned for Term 2, which will require us to do 2 assessments next term, but if we have effective teamwork in place, then it should be no problem as we can just assess two different parts of the same one quality collaborative inquiry project.

Teamwork seems like a simple concept to implement in your organization. You discuss tasks that need to be done, who will do them, and you are off and running. However, the reality is that teamwork skills require work. Collaboration is another hot topic today - most people assume that collaboration is simply another way of saying teamwork. But the difference between the two is not just matter of semantics.  

This guide explores teamwork and collaboration: what they are exactly, how they differ, and how they compare to a few other similar terms. We discuss why failures happen, why you should have strong communication, and why having a collaborative relationship is important for you and your learning. Then, we figure out what you need to do before considering collaboration and teach you how to collaborate well and foster teamwork. Finally, we’ll get in-depth advice on fostering teamwork and collaboration from some industry experts. 

What Are Teamwork and Collaboration?

An educational environment is an excellent opportunity to teach not only technical skills, but also soft skills like collaboration and teamwork. Being in school allows people to try new things, make mistakes, and learn hands-on without fear. Further, you push your students’ higher-level thinking skills by forcing them to think about different points of view. This also develops social skills, positive cultural relations, self-esteem, and self-management skills. 

Some techniques to teach collaboration skills include: 

• Put Time Limits on Work Groups: Time limits force your students to think and work quickly. Natural leadership skills will also bubble up.
• Institute a “We All Answer” Policy: Make your policy that everyone in a group should offer a suggestion while brainstorming. This helps you avoid having only your stronger students participate.
• Institute a “No Bad Ideas” Policy: This puts everything your students come up with - regardless of how outlandish - down on paper and gives it a chance without judgment. This encourages them to think creatively without rejection, which gives them confidence.
• Improv: This may seem like an extreme way to teach collaboration. However, improvisational theater forces your students to work together and think together immediately. Many fields outside of theater have used improv extensively as a way to develop people’s ability to communicate and creatively solve problems. Put your students on teams and have them practice on the spot scenes. 

Here are some techniques to teach teamwork skills:

• Assign Group Roles for a Task: Each member of the group should have a job, such as leader, timekeeper, on-task manager, or note taker. Each student should do the job assigned during the activity, and then rotate as the activity changes. Afterward, discuss what happened during the activity, and look for what happened to the product when students deviated from their assigned roles.
• Give Everyone a Chance to Be a Leader: Some students are natural leaders, and some struggle with leading. Start with small, contained activities, and have each student lead their group or class through an exercise. 
• Model the Behavior: Show your students how to play on a team while they are leading by modeling the type of behavior you want to see. 
• Highlight the Significance of Every Job: Ensure that every student understands why the role they are assigned is important. Have them tell the class how their role leads to the end product. 

Team-based learning (TBL) is a type of small group learning that is structured to help students learn to work in teams. They prepare their materials outside of class and apply it while in class. This structure grades students as individuals and as a team. It helps them verbalize their thinking within their team and about other teams. TBL is evidence-based, and usually taught in modules. Instructors may use several methods to teach TBL, including those by L. Dee Fink, Michaelsen, and Koles.

Today, fostering collaboration is a hot topic in business. Some businesses are looking for answers on how you implement, teach the soft skills, and build a collaborative environment. Others are looking for ways to improve their technology game in order to make collaboration easier. According to technology experts around the web, some current trends in technologically-driven collaboration include using the Internet of Things (IoT), software as a service (SaaS), and your own devices. In this section, our experts will share some of their experiences developing collaborative teams and give tips on the best ways to get your team to collaborate and communicate well.

• Care: Care about each member of your team. Know their likes and dislikes. Treat them to their favorite bar. Ask them about their family. Know their birthdays and anniversaries. Even more so, value their input, opinions, and ideas. A team will work together more easily when they know the leader and the team care about them. 
• Commission: Commission the team members to lead meetings, initiatives, and projects. Make sure everyone has a role they own in the effort. 
• Communicate: Does Bob prefer text, while Karen loves calls? Does Joe do well with FB Messenger but slack off on Slack? While having a unified communication system is ideal, it's not realistic — unless you have a system to integrate the different mediums. And, don't just know the communication medium each team member prefers. Know their styles. Bob may be more indirect, while Karen may spout out every idea that comes, and Joe may be a natural skeptic. It's hard to collaborate without first understanding how each team member communicates.
• Contrast: When endeavouring in a collaborative effort, contrasting and divergent ideas must be held together. Many innovative breakthroughs happen through lateral thinking and not from intense focus in one area. 
• Example from Failure: Before training other teams as a corporate trainer, I led a team of my own. A crisis occurred where I lost half of my aid team at a bus station in a city of 7 million on the way to the airport. Another team member with me lost her plane ticket (a 16 destination non-redeemable paper ticket). Instead of caring for this team member I was annoyed; instead of requesting input and ideas from the rest of the team for solutions. I focused on myself. I tried to find the team and the ticket back where we left them to no avail. I checked the only places in the bus station I thought them to be—not there either. Also, I had no communication mediums—we didn't have a local cell phone to reach the other group. It wasn't until a kind local lady gave me a suggestion to look elsewhere that I broke out of my narrow focus and found the rest of the team. Long story short, after the lady opened my thinking of where the team might be, I took a risk going to the airport one ticket shy of getting the whole team on the plane. Luckily, the risk paid off as the ticket was at the airport in the lost and found! From then on I decided to put the focus off of myself and widen it to the whole team.”
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Lana Moore, Founder and CEO, MarTechExec comments: "I’m a surviving, former-corporate America executive, now entrepreneur, with experience launching, growing, and overseeing companies and marketing organizations. Most recently, I’m the Founder and CEO of martechexec.com — an online community where marketers can learn, share, and discuss marketing technology topics and solutions.