Using Team Operating Rules to foster collaboration

By Jennifer Diamond and Julie Scales, Project Management Certificate (UW Professional & Continuing Education, Continuum College)

Collaborative projects are a key component of many UW courses. But before project work begins, teams need to connect, set ground rules, and articulate norms for shared work and outcomes. For the Certificate in Project Management capstone course, we developed an assignment that models this activity. Our Team Operating Rules assignment devotes an entire class session for students to identify their own team roles, create a schedule of activities, and determine the rules and tools that govern their team collaboration. As a result, when conflicts arise, as they inevitably do, the students first turn to their own norms to resolve conflicts. This emphasis on collaboration helps foster greater accountability for their own learning and work.

The basics

We ask the students to meet with their teams to identify role rotation, schedule team activities, and address the logistics of collaboration (like how to store files and when to use a Slack channel). They also determine interpersonal processes such as conflict resolution and assignment review. In this way, the team builds its own operating model. Project Managers do this with their teams; it reinforces the layers of culture within an organization, a project, and then the team.

The same principles apply to any team that plans to work together for a length of time, whether it’s a one-day workshop or years on a research project. In a Chemistry course, for example, students work together to help each other solve their problems on their weekly quiz section assignments. In an English class, students give each other critical feedback for peer review.

How does this assignment work in an online course?

We’ve adapted this assignment for synchronous, asynchronous, and blended online courses. For synchronous courses, we run the activity using Zoom breakout rooms. For large classes, we pre-assign groups to Zoom breakout rooms and use the groups feature in Canvas (which allows one person to turn in an assignment for the whole team).

If the class doesn’t have a fixed meeting time, we set up a small group discussion in Canvas so that students first schedule a time to meet with each other live. If students are in different time zones, part of what they need to figure out is what time will be acceptable to everyone. This practice is part of conducting business internationally. Like the rest of the assignment, it has professional relevance for students after they earn their certificate/graduate.

Students meet using Zoom or whatever tool they agree to use. While teams could technically complete this assignment offline (e.g., students IM each other to coordinate, they fill in sections of a shared Google or Word doc, or they email back and forth attachments), we want the students to meet each other and co-create group norms so that they are accountable to each other. That negotiation is easier when you establish real-time working relationships with teammates, hearing their voices and seeing their faces.

The benefits

Practicing to articulate team rules and roles reinforces the value of investing upfront as a team before putting that investment to work toward shared outcomes, so any student teams in any program can benefit. And of course, collaboration helps students get to know each other and ultimately improves their teamwork and their learning.

Jennifer Diamond is an instructor with UW Continuum College’s Project Management Certificate Program. She has more than 30 years of organizational, operational, and professional services experience focused on team performance and operational improvements driven by solid organization design and technology.

Julie Scales is a senior instructional designer with UW Continuum College where she works on a portfolio of in-person, online, and blended courses, including the Certificate in Project Management. She collaborates to foster active learning experiences that encourage student interaction with the content, other students, and with the instructor.

Teaching Spanish: A multi-day “finale” instead of a final exam

By Samuel Jaffee, Spanish & Portuguese Studies

This spring quarter I’m teaching Spanish 302 and Spanish 303, both of which guide students in developing writing strategies in Spanish (creative fiction, business letters, reportage, argument and counterargument, and literary and visual analysis).

In lieu of a final exam, both classes will enjoy a multi-day “finale.”

Students in Spanish 302 are collaborating during Week 10 on synchronous debates (using Zoom, with a mix of speaking and writing). These debates are design-centered and inquiry-based activities that ask students to engage critically with current events and rely on the skills built during the course. In the debates, students propose a political, social, and economic future for Venezuela that responds to that country’s ongoing, years-long crisis. Students also debate Mexico’s “Day without Women,” a social movement from March of this year, and develop plans for a mobile app that would spread knowledge of the Mexican women’s lived realities.

During Week 10 in Spanish 303, students will collaborate one day synchronously (on Zoom, mostly speaking) and one day asynchronously (in writing, via Canvas Discussions) on creative activities that allow students to rethink, rewrite, and build upon four stories read in the second part of the quarter, in order to make the characters’ identities and lives experientially real. Students recently completed a formal literary analysis essay, a comparative analysis of two stories by Jorge Luis Borges, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, or Julio Cortazar. In this project, students will have a chance to play with the readings — perhaps writing a sequel, changing the protagonist, introducing a new conflict, or clarifying what is left unsaid in the original. In these creative tasks, students have the freedom to focus on aspects of the stories that were confusing to them and keep “thinking with” the characters (and their classmates’ ideas).

I have studied the work of linguists Jean Lave, Etienne Wenger, and Claire Kramsch, and artist-scholars Tim Rollins and K.O.S. (Kids of Survival), and I use their approaches to invigorate my assessments. The SPAN 303 course methodology is anchored in the scholarship and practice of Pre-Texts by Doris Sommer (Harvard University) and the work of Sommer’s Cultural Agents initiative, which offers educators programming, training, and workshops — most recently, an April webinar via Zoom in “Social (Distant) Practicing” — that I have found inspirational for my course design.

These design-centered activities encompass methodologies that democratize learning for the current generation and make the class a lot more dynamic. After all, who wants to learn Spanish in order to take an exam?

“Finale” project examples

Two students in Spanish 303, Kamryn Bodholt and Zachary Chambers, submitted dueling songs to the Canvas Discussions — songs that do much to clarify the turbulent emotional state of the protagonist of Argentine expatriate writer Julio Cortázar’s classic story “La noche boca arriba” [Headstrong into the Night].

Kamryn and Zachary were also my students in Spanish 302 in the winter quarter of this year. Here, they describe how the two-course Spanish writing sequence helps their intellectual and creative development as they gain fluency in the language:

Kamryn Bodholt:

I am a sophomore and am double majoring in Spanish and English: Creative Writing. Spanish 302 and 303 have been my favorite Spanish classes at UW so far (especially 303) because I have a lot of interest in creative writing and short stories, so in a way this class has been a combination of my two majors. Reading the stories alone builds my vocabulary (having to look at the definitions in the margins or the dictionary), and the homework questions help guide my thinking by hinting at the deeper messages in the story. I like how there can be multiple interpretations of each story, and that we have the freedom to explore our own interpretations as well as our classmates’ through class activities and discussions. Reading the articles written by literary critics has helped improve my professional/scholarly tone when writing in Spanish, and I have noticed these improvements in my speaking as well. I also enjoy the opportunities we have to be creative during class, like creating an Instagram post from the perspective of a character in one of the stories, drawing pictures of characters/plots, and writing songs, to name a few. Practicing my reading, writing, and speaking skills through these various activities has made me a more well-rounded Spanish student, and I can see these improvements in my writing when I compare essays from past quarters to ones from this quarter.

Un accidente de moto
ha hecho a mi cuerpo roto

Desperté en un hospital
y la ayuda médica para salvar mi vida fue vital

En la selva en mis sueños
tenía que correr de los enemigos

Había una enfermera vestida de blanca ropa,
y ella me dio mucha sopa

Un enemigo me apuñaló con un cuchillo
Esto también sucedió en mi sueño

El conflicto con los enemigos fue una inconveniencia
pero habló con otro paciente, y tuvo la misma experiencia

Estaba atrapado en la silla y escuché a los tambores
y sentí la celebración de mi muerte de los aplaudidores

En el hospital no pude abrir los ojos
Ya mi vida no tenía despojos

Alguien se le había acercado
Con un cuchillo en la mano

En este momento gané una nueva perspectiva
En la posición de la boca arriba

Zachary Chambers:

I am a sophomore pursuing a double degree in Biochemistry and Spanish. During my past two quarters in Spanish 302 and 303, my knowledge of the language has grown exponentially. I have really enjoyed these courses more than my previous ones, because they have been structured very differently. Instead of focusing on the smaller aspects of grammar and stressing over tests, I have been able to learn the language in a much more engaging and interesting way. As a matter of fact, the assignments always stretch my thinking and sometimes leave me pondering over a story for many days. They are always very creative, unique and thought-provoking. Because of this, I feel that my Spanish writing skills have tremendously improved as I am able to analyze texts from multiple perspectives before making a final decision about the characters, themes, hidden messages, etc. All in all, I have really liked these courses and have grown greatly as a Spanish writer because of them.

La mujer con quien me choca
En la ciudad hermosa
Ojalá viviera allí

La camilla de que me ponen
Incómodo, pero reconfortante
A saber que el otro era una pesadilla

La selva que huelo intensamente
En que corro para escaparme
De la guerra florida

En la cama, me siento
Ojos muy abiertos
Y como la sopa que me pone tranquilo

Regreso a la selva
Todavía corriendo
Puedo ver sus antorchas

¡Fiebre! Me despierto en la espalda
Con una tos y bebo agua
Para ponerme de nuevo a dormir

Los gritos que oigo
Me están acercando
Hasta que me llevan y me toman

Me despierto por la última vez
Y sé que la realidad no era lo que pensé
Este es la verdad

Las hogueras que me circundan
Y los aztecas que me miran
Me dicen que este es el fin

Me acerca con el cuchillo
Que tiene la habilidad de asesinar
Yo boca arriba

Samuel Jaffee is a lecturer in Spanish & Portuguese Studies and teaches courses in writing, literary studies, and visual culture. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of California, Irvine, with a specialization in Andean literary and cultural studies from the colonial period through the present day. He presents widely and leads workshops for high school and college instructors on strategies for teaching classes of heritage and second-language learners, writing pedagogies, and incorporating less-commonly taught languages, such as indigenous languages, into a Spanish curriculum.

Math in the time of coronavirus

Reflections on teaching during the pandemic

By Jennifer Quinn, School of Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences at UW Tacoma

The COVID-19 viral disruption affects us all, particularly our most vulnerable citizens. It’s vital to find ways to connect our students and humanize this unprecedented and isolating experience.

These days I’m trying to worry less about the integrity of online examinations and the quality of online content — and think more about the people. I start by assuming students’ best intentions.

I’m also thinking about learning goals: Do we want to enable students to be critical thinkers? Problem solvers? To have flexible minds and be able to adapt? They will get all that through the experience we provide and more.

Will it really matter if my Calculus I class doesn’t get to L’Hopital’s rule, or the Calculus II class doesn’t get to partial fraction decomposition? I doubt it. For those that need it, there will be time later. For now, let’s congratulate ourselves and our students on getting through, and just breathe.

Visit Math in the Time of Corona to read more of Jennifer Quinn’s reflections on teaching during the pandemic.

Jennifer Quinn is a professor of mathematics in the School of Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences at UW Tacoma. She has held many positions of national leadership in mathematics, including executive director for the Association for Women in Mathematics, co-editor of Math Horizons, a publication of the Mathematical Association of America (MAA), chair of MAA’s Council on Publications, and currently MAA’s president-elect. As a combinatorial scholar, Quinn thinks that beautiful proofs are as much art as science. Simplicity, elegance, and transparency should be the driving principles, and she strives to bring this same ethic to her teaching, service, and professional work.

Teaching from everywhere

Looking for even more ideas on how to teach and grade remotely? Find out how Rick Mohler, UW associate professor of architecture, is teaching his Research Design Studio students, as they discuss how they have re-imagined six Seattle neighborhoods.

Learn more about UW Zoom video conferencing.

Also, check out what faculty at Stanford are doing. Here is how Indiana University is maximizing remote teaching, as well as University of California Berkeley. Portland State University and Oregon State University have guides, too. And don’t forget to check the UW Teaching Remotely site, which we update regularly.