Supplemental Resources: Supporting Student Learning
Building an Effective Working Team: Reflection Questions
A Note for the Instructor: This set of questions taps on prior knowledge first (questions 1 and 2) to increase individual awareness and to create space for students to share experiences they want to avoid (q1) and/or replicate (q2) with their team. Questions 3 and 4 invite students to translate their past experiences into productive actions now. Finally, question 5 intends to build self-awareness in each student about behaviors they engage in that may or may not contribute to effective group functioning.
Questions for Group Members (embeddable document generator)
Embedding This Reflection Tool Into Your Canvas Course
If you’d like to experiment with embedding the H5P interactive tool into your Canvas page, you’re welcome to do so. At the bottom of the tool above, you’ll see a button marked “embed.” Inserting this embed code into the HTML editor should allow you and your students to view the interactive version and download their responses as a document file. (As with all embedded documents or tools, it’s useful to have a text file of the relevant questions posted as a link in Canvas as a fallback option in case a server goes down somewhere.) We recommend only trying this embed approach if you’re comfortable using the HTML editor. If you’re less comfortable with the HTML editor, the simplest way to incorporate these questions into Canvas is probably to copy the text version of the questions (duplicated below) into a Canvas Quiz or page.
NB – This form doesn’t send a copy of students’ responses to you as an instructor. If you’d like students to share their responses with you, you can either embed this form within the text field of a Canvas assignment and invite students to upload their final document there or you can simply set up a Canvas quiz with these questions instead.
Questions for Group Members
As you build your team community, it is important to reflect early on your aspirations and expectations for each other and on how you want your individual prior experiences working with groups to inform your work this semester. It is also important to build self-awareness of behaviors that can help or hinder your team’s work.
- Think about an experience you have had with group work that went well, helped you learn and/or think in a new way, and encouraged you to engage. What behaviors, circumstances, situations, etc. contributed to your learning and functioning well in those groups?
- Think about an experience you have had with group work that did not go well, did not help you learn or think in a new way, or did not encourage you to engage. What behaviors, circumstances, situations, etc. hindered your learning and functioning in those groups?
- What thoughts come to mind when you envision this team functioning at its very best?
- What does this team need to do now and throughout the semester in order to function at its very best? (Please be as specific as possible)
- Here is a list of some constructive and destructive behaviors that can affect the functioning of a team. Any of us can engage in any of these behaviors at different times throughout the lifecycle of our team, but one or two do tend to come more naturally to us. Reflect on your own behaviors when working in a team and select one constructive behavior and one destructive behavior that you most frequently adopt.
