Aligning Instructional Objectives with Features of a Self-Contained Simulated Teamwork Activity for Teamwork Skill Development

这个改进本科STEM教育（IUSE）项目将开发一种新的方法来提高工程专业学生的团队合作技能。工程专业毕业生需要很强的团队合作能力，成为国家技术劳动力的生产力。然而，培养团队合作技能既困难又耗时。这个项目将进一步开发一种新的独立活动，能够提高一年级工程专业学生的团队合作技能。这项活动费用低廉，最多只需要三个小时的上课时间，教师可以迅速准备和评分。 初步的试点测试表明，该活动是有效的，提高了学生的内在动机。有效的团队合作技能，如任务协调和团队内部沟通得到提高。所追求的活动的阵列将导致学生谁，平均而言，已亲自纳入团队合作技能。 通过有效的活动发展团队合作技能将导致有效的团队合作行为的习惯。这些方法比简单地告诉学生如何在团队中工作更可取，因为这很少会产生持久的效果。这种个性化的体验将导致重要的团队合作技能的长期保留。本项目将阐明这种团队合作发展活动的有效性，并完善该计划，以确保其他教育工作者轻松有效地实施。通常情况下，学生对什么是良好的团队合作并没有保留强烈的误解，而是对如何最好地处理团队合作情况知之甚少或缺乏经验。南达科他州矿业学院的一个团队开发了一种交互式模拟团队合作练习，能够从建构主义者的角度提高团队合作技能。作为一种模拟练习，降低了对失败的恐惧，消除了团队讨论的压力和影响。通过按计划参与活动，学生们建立在自己的知识基础上，以加强和建立良好的团队合作实践。确保建构主义方法成功的重要组成部分是对齐，反思和反馈。如果活动与学习目标不一致，要么学习不会发生，要么会学到错误的概念。反思强化了所学的内容，以便长期保留，而对反思的反馈则确保了建构主义方法产生的想法得到了专家的验证，值得保留。通过对反思和定量评估进行三角分析，项目小组的目的是展示这一活动在全国一些大学的成效，并展示其他教育工作者为提高学生的团队合作技能而对这一活动的适应性和可采用性。

This Improving Undergraduate STEM Education (IUSE) project will develop a new approach to improving the teamwork skills among engineering students. Engineering graduates need strong teamwork skills to be productive members of the nation's technological workforce. However, developing teamwork skills is both difficult and time-consuming. This project will further develop a novel self-contained activity capable of improving teamwork skills among first-year engineering students. The activity is inexpensive, requires only a maximum of three hours class time, and can be prepared and graded quickly by instructors. Initial pilot testing shows that the activity is effective and increases intrinsic motivation of students. Effective teamwork skills such as task coordination and intra-team communication are improved. The array of activities pursued WILL result in students who, on average, have personally incorporated teamwork skills. Development of teamwork skills thorough efficient activities WILL result in habits of effective teamwork behavior. The methods are preferable to simply telling students how to work in teams which rarely results in lasting effects. This personalized experience WILL result in a longer-term retention of important teamwork skills. This project will clarify the effectiveness of this teamwork development activity and refine the program to ensure easy and effective implementation by other educators.Typically, students do not retain strong misconceptions regarding what is defined as good teamwork, but rather are ill informed or lack experience on how to best approach a teamwork situation. A team at the South Dakota School of Mines has developed an interactive simulated teamwork exercise capable of improving teamwork skills from a constructivist point of view. As a simulated exercise, the fear of failure is lowered and the stress and impact of team discourse is eliminated. By engaging in the activity as intended, the students build upon their own knowledge base to reinforce and establish good teamwork practices. Important components to ensure the success of the constructivist approach are alignment, reflection, and feedback. If the activity does not align with the learning goals, either learning will not happen, or wrong concepts will be learned. Reflection reinforces what is learned for longer-term retention, while feedback on reflections reassures ideas generated by a constructivist approach are validated by an expert and are worth retaining. By triangulating reflections with quantitative assessments, the project team aims to show the effectiveness of this activity in a number of universities across the country and to show the adaptability and adoptability of this activity by other educators aiming to improve the teamwork skills of their students.