Group and Team Facilitation, ADLT 675, Section 901

Adult Learning Program, School of Education

Teaching in Medical Education Faculty Fellows Program

Course Director

Teresa (Terry) Carter, EdD

Associate Dean for Professional Instruction and Faculty Development

McGlothlin Medical Education Center, 4-203

Telephone: 828-3134

E-mail:

Course Meetings

Mondays, 5:15 -7:45 pm

McGlothlin Medical Education Center, Room 3-101 (third floor meeting room)unless otherwise noted on Week-by-Week schedule

Face-to- Face Class Sessions:

September 23, 30; October7, 21, 28; November11, 18, 25; December 2, 9

Dates in-between these are online sessions in which you have self-paced work on your own schedule.

Week of October 14-18

Week of Nov 4-8

Course Description

This course is designed to help faculty hone their facilitation skills for working with small groups in an interactive learning setting. The focus of this course will be on gaining knowledge and skills about group dynamics, the stages of group development, and the many “hidden” processes that make group life so complex to understand. Our focus will include development of facilitation skills to know when and how to intervene in the interest of learning, how to deal with conflict among team members,and how to help team members learn collaboratively. Faculty fellows will examine group and team leadership, group member roles, team performance, issues of power and conflict, and strategies for high-performing teams. This course is designed to be highly interactive and experiential with practice in developing facilitation skills.

Texts – Required Reading

  1. Levi, D. (2011). Group dynamics for teams. (3rded.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. ISBN: 978-1-4129-7762-3.
  2. Schwartz, R. (2002). The skilled facilitator (rev). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. ISBN: 0-7879-4723-7.
  3. Schein, E. (2009). Helping. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Kohler. ISBN: 978-1-60509-856-2.

Note:Additional handouts may be posted on the course blog. Please check the blog site and bookmark this page for future reference:

Course Topics

  • Characteristics and underlying processes of successful teams
  • The role of conflict and oppositional forces in shaping group dynamics
  • The paradoxical nature of belonging to and participating in groups
  • Issues of authority and dependency in groups
  • Time and transition points in project teams
  • The nature of intra- and inter-group dynamics
  • The role of power and social influence in group dynamics
  • Group decision-making processes
  • Leadership roles within teams
  • Group facilitator roles and issues, including process, problems, conflict, and emotions
  • Strategies for improving team effectiveness
  • Techniques that foster group creativity
  • Effects of diversity in teams
  • Group phenomena known as “groupthink” and the Abilene Paradox (management of agreement in groups)

Course Objectives

After completing this course, learners will have:

Analyzed the theories, terminology, and analytical frameworks related to groups and teams and determined how these are applied to facilitation of adult learning experiences in medical education settings;

Identified their own group memberships and how these shape individual identities and influence group processes;

Facilitated a class discussion as part of a team;

Led a group facilitation exercise for a team other than your own;

Reflected on group dynamics and team facilitation through reflective writing on a blog;

Analyzed their own contributions to a team or group learning experience.

Preparing for Participation in the Team Experience

A. The Shoebox Exercise

In our first class, you will have an opportunity to introduce yourself to others who will become part of your project team for the semester. Similar to situations in work and clinical practice, you do not always get to select those with whom you must work as a team. Part of the learning experience is for you to gain first-hand experience in project-based team learning throughout the course.

As the first exercise in getting to know your other team members, you have been asked to bring a shoebox containing a variety of personal artifacts to share. These are small objects that represent significant aspects of your life. They can be symbolic objects of any kind that are illustrative of events, people, and places that have been and are currently important to you personally. Often, these represent the choices and career decisions in your life as well as important connections with others (individuals, groups, or organizations). Quite frequently, they also represent the important group memberships that are important to your personal and professional identity. You should bring only those objects that you are willing to share and describe to introduce yourself to your teammates.

B. Team Charter

Each team will construct a team charter during the second class session as a guide of how you intend to work together. By this point, you will have some idea of the developing group norms and practices, as well as the challenges of working together. Developing the charter provides you with a mechanism for discussing your team development process throughout the semester and how to make it better. The following is presented as a guide for you to use in building your team charter. In the interest of learning through participation, this will be a self-managing effort on your part. By the third class session, you will need to submit a copy to the instructor.

Sample Team Charter

1)Describe the purpose of your team. Note that you may choose a name for your team and use this team name throughout the semester.

2)Goals (task and process). Clearly and specifically state your team’s goals as you understand them. Include measurable task and process criteria and how you will know you are working effectively.

3)Membership. List the names of team members and your mode of contact for getting in touch with each other.

4)Expectations of team members. What are the group norms that you have established so far? What others do you want to develop? These should be about honoring commitments, attending team meetings, being on time, advance preparation for your meetings, and the roles of various members. Be specific.

5)Conflict and problem resolution. What means do you want to use to address conflicts and problems when they come up?

6)Rewards. What will you do to recognize or reward members for outstanding contributions?

7)Timelines. Decide how you will organize your time to accomplish team tasks. Define process “checkpoints” during the semester according to due dates on the Week-by-Week schedule.

8)Roles. Clearly identify and define both task and process roles, e.g. leader, contact person, gatekeeper, agenda writer, enforcer, mediator, etc. Roles can be shared and/or rotated but should be clearly delineated up front. How will you ensure that all voices are heard in the team decisions you make?

9)Specify the instructor’s role, if any. Decide what role, if any, you want me to play in your team process and check to see if I am willing to assume the requested role.

10)Signatures. Usually, each team member signs the charter and each member keeps a copy of the paper agreement, in addition to the copy you turn in at the third class session.

11)Changes: The team may also agree to make changes in the charter should they become necessary at any time.

GradedAssignments

  1. Assignment # 1 - Use of Blogs for Reflective Practice– 15% of course grade

During this course, learners will have the opportunity to establish their own blogs for reflective practice. Each of you should establish your own blog through the VCU blog hosting site for Wordpress ( where you will have your choice of design templates and styles to personalize the blog. This site will guide you through the basic blog set up from a drop-down menu at the top of the page. Additional information on using the VCU Blog service can be found at . We will devote some time at the second class session to getting your blog sites up and running so that they can be linked to our course blog, which will serve as the learning management system for the course. Only grades will be posted on Blackboard for this class. If you have any questions once we demonstrate how to set up your own blog in this class, please do not hesitate to contact Katherine Tucker, or Terry Carter, for assistance.

Once you have established your blog, we will add the URL as a link on our course blog, You will be organized into groups of 3 or 4 people as blogging partners to share comments with each other. This will “streamline” our blogging as reflective practice in the class so that your emphasis for assignment purposes is to share y your ideas and comments with a small group with whom you regularly share comments. You can, of course, read any of the blogs of your classmates and leave comments for them (and you are encouraged to do so!), but you will have certain assignments in which you and your blog partners comment on each other’s experiences throughout the semester.

Guidelines for writing on your blog are posted as a Reflector-Mirror Exercise, and there will be a rubric that describes how blogging as reflective practice is graded in the course. The content of your reflections will not be graded, but your active engagement in learning through reflective practice will be. At a minimum, you should have at least three substantive blog postings throughout the semester on your own blog and at least three comments on blogs belonging to your blog partners. You may choose to comment on classmates’ blogs as often as you wish. The goal here is to develop a dialogue community within the class about what you are learning and experiencing as you learn about group dynamics and team facilitation.

  1. Assignment # 2 – Team Facilitated Chapter Discussions – 20% of course grade (shared)

During the course, you will have two opportunities to participate in a team project in which you and your team members lead a portion of our class session. The first of these is to plan and present (i.e., facilitate!) a class discussion on selected topics addressed in our text readings. The four teams will have an opportunity to select one of these issues faced by teams and described in the Levi text (note that each team needs to address a different topic):

  • Managing Conflict (Chapter 7)
  • Power and Social Influence (Chapter 8)
  • Team Decision-Making (Chapter 9)
  • Team Leadership (Chapter 10)
  • Problem-Solving (Chapter 11)
  • Creativity (Chapter 12)
  • Diversity in Teams (Chapter 13)

All class members will be responsible for reading the above chapters, with particular attention to those that are chosen for class discussion. The grading rubric will describe expectations for team members in this assignment. Upon completion of the discussion topics, team members will complete Dyer’s Team Development Survey anonymously, and the resulting data will be fed back to the team for their analysis and discussion of team dynamics during a subsequent class session. While each team is to facilitate the discussion based on the text chapters, they are also free to include additional material, exercises, or experiential activities to aid in our understanding. As adult educators, you should use this practice opportunity to learn about facilitation by leading the rest of us in activities that facilitate our learning. The estimated time frame for each teaching session is approximately 45-50 minutes. Preparation time is anticipated to occur during the non-class meeting week in which you engage in self-directed work. This team activity accounts for 20% of the course grade and is shared by all team members.

  1. Assignment # 3 - Team Facilitated Exercises on Developing Facilitation Skills – 25% of course grade (shared)

The second team project is one in which the team selects from a variety of experiential exercises and activities to build skills and knowledge in group and team facilitation. Again, the team will lead the rest of us in learning facilitation skills through our participating in activities they have designed for us as learners. The goal for the team is to share content about group and team facilitation as well as enhance learners’ skills through the exercises in which the team will lead us.

The “teaching” team may choose from any of the chapters and topics presented in the Facilitation-at-a-Glance pocket guidebook given to you at the first class session. In addition, I have photocopied selected exercises from the Skilled Facilitator Fieldbook, also written by your textbook author, Roger Schwarz. These very short, 2-3 page chapters include the following:

  • Chapter 9 – Jointly Design Purpose and Process for a Conversation
  • Chapter 28 – Holding Risky Conversations
  • Chapter 29 – Exploring Your Contribution to Problems
  • Chapter 30 – Moving Toward Difficulty
  • Chapter 31 - Responding to Silence and Interruptions and Enabling Members to Talk to Each Other
  • Chapter 32 – Raising Issues In or Out of the Group
  • Chapter 33 – Finding Your Voice
  • Chapter 42 – How to Stop Contributing to Your Boss’s and Your Own Ineffectiveness
  • Chapter 53 – The Drama Triangle: A Unilateral Control Program for Helping Others

The team may decide which readings constitute preparation for other class members prior to the one-hour session, in addition to any that are assigned in the Week-by-Week schedule. The grading rubric will describe expectations for team members in this assignment. Upon completion of the discussion topics, team members will again complete Dyer’s Team Development Survey anonymously, and the resulting data will be fed back to the team for their analysis and discussion of any changes that have occurred in team dynamics at this point in the semester. Preparation time for this assignment is anticipated to occur during the non-class meeting week in which you engage in self-directed work. This team activity accounts for 25% of the course grade and is shared by all team members.

  1. Assignment # 4 - Individual Assessment of Learning in the Team Experience (25% of course grade)

As a final assignment for the course, each learner shouldwrite an individual essay that integrates what they have learned about groups and teams through the literature studied and the experiences they have had in working within a faculty team. Your essay should conform to general standards for graduate writing: 12-point Times New Roman font, double-spaced with one-inch margins, and cited appropriately for either education or medical education. An estimated length is 6 to 8 pages, but quality is always more important than quantity. Be sure to tie your own experiential learning with the readings and literature you have studied. Guiding questions for organizing your essay include (but are not limited to) these:

“How did my team experience the concepts we were learning about?”

“What were the most challenging aspects of performing as a project team?”

“What was my role in the team and how did it evolve over time?”

“How did my team experience issues of group development, conflict, role negotiation, decision-making, leadership, facilitation, and the intra-team dynamics as well as the inter-team dynamics with other teams in the class?”

“What lessons have I learned about groups and teams that I can apply to my work with students or trainees?”

“How have I changed in my beliefs, values, or assumptions about the purpose and functions of groups and teams?”

“What behaviors do I need to work on/develop/modify to enhance my own facilitation skills to benefit my learners as well as contribute as a member of team in academic medicine?”

  1. Assignment # 5 - Peer Assessment – Contribution to the Team – 15% of course grade

As a final assignment for the class, each person should complete Dee Fink’s peer assessment for team members. This one-page handout will be distributed and discussed in class, and it will also be linked on the Week-by-Week schedule so you can download it, complete it, and bring it to the final class session. Peer assessment on each member’s contribution to the team is an important aspect of performance in the course and counts for 15% of your grade. Peers’ evaluations will be averaged for a composite grade. The rubric for this assignment will spell out the expectations for team performance at each grade level.

Summary of Graded Assignments

Blogging as Reflective Practice15 points

Team-Facilitated Chapter Discussions (shared grade)20 points

Team-Facilitated Exercises on Facilitation Skills25 points

Final Paper (individual) – Learning in the Team Experience25 points

Peer Assessment15 points

TOTAL100 points

Grading Rubric for this Course

A
93-100 /
  • Performed at graduate level of excellence throughout the course.
  • Participated actively in online as well as class discussions and activities, appropriately referencing credible resources from class/external readings and introducing personal/anecdotal/experiential comments that contributed to a broadened awareness of the topic under discussion for all participants.
  • Engaged in scholarly debate with others.
  • Submitted timely, impeccable and well-written documents/papers related to assignments.

B
85-92 /
  • Performed at graduate level on most fronts, did not rise to the level of excellence in all areas.
  • Participated actively in online discussions and activities (including wiki writing) as well as in class dialogue, but with less displayed familiarity with the literature from text and outside readings.
  • Submitted well-written documents/papers related to assignments that contained only minor errors/problems.

C
77-84 /
  • Participated in online and in-class discussions and activities on a limited basis or did so from an uninformed/personal perspective only.
  • Submitted written documents/papers related to assignments that were less than comprehensive, inadequately researched, or inclusive of important grammatical errors.

D
69-76 /
  • Performed in a substandard manner on several assignments.
  • Failed to demonstrate a basic understanding of concepts and/or failed to adequately contribute to the class through class participation, contribution to the wiki or other onlineactivities.

F
Below 69 /
  • Engaged in academic dishonesty, stopped participating altogether, or failed to meet the requirements of the class.

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