ESSENTIAL ELEMENTS IN TEAMING:

Creation of a teaming rubric

Prepared by the Learning Environment Developers (team LED)

Jon Miller (student team leader) Donald Elger (faculty advisor)

(509) 332-7062 (208) 885-7889

Tamara Cougar

Fahad Khalid

Veronica Meyer

Richard Statler

Luke Thompson

Bob Wiegers

Team list-serve:

Submitted to Dr. Michael Kyte and NIATT

August 26, 2002

Executive Summary

In recent years there has been an increasing demand for high performance teams. Thus, universities have been striving to effectively educate their graduates, thus providing a competitive edge within this area. Team LED is proposing to create a rubric that describes teaming. A rubric is a written document that describes elements of quality and defines levels of performance. Rubrics allow team members and others (e.g. teachers, mentors and managers) to develop a shared understanding of what good performance looks like. They also allow measurement of performance so that team members can become aware of how well they are performing and how they might improve.

The teaming rubric may benefit NIATT in several ways. It may foster improving teaming in projects such as Future Truck and the Clean Snowmobile. The rubric will provide a tool for use in engineering classrooms and in summer camps such as the Traffic Signal camp.

By following best practices as described by Arter (2001), a rubric will be created. We will use a team-based process that involves our team, Professor Elger and a graduate student (L. Westra) who has been researching teaming as part of his Master of Science Thesis. The rubric will be completed and ready for presentation in two weeks, at a cost of $1450.

The long-term benefit of the rubric is that it will provide a way to measure and improve teaming performance in many contexts at this university and elsewhere.

Introduction

The National Institute for Advanced Transportation Technology (NIATT) in cooperation with the Learning Environment Developers (LED) will create a new tool for increasing team performance and learners’ skills at the University of Idaho.

Background

One of the top concerns of leaders in industry and academia is the abilities of engineers to perform effectively in teams. At the University of Idaho, there is an extensive interest in creating graduates who have the demonstrated ability to perform on teams.

One very effective approach to educating people to perform on teams is a rubric. A rubric is a document that provides both assessment and feedback capabilities for a given performance. Rubrics identify the key traits of a quality performance and give a description of what performance at each level looks like.

There are currently two NSF grants awarded to the Mechanical Engineering Department for the establishment of an enriched learning environment. This will be done by changing the way the classroom experience is structured, and through the establishment of a mentoring program. One important way to enhance student learning is to involve them in the development of performance criteria. Team LED represents the first iteration of mentoring students and those who will establish the future mentoring program will come from its ranks.

Scope

The rubric for teaming will be developed to measure and improve the team performance for NIATT contexts.

The rubric will also be used by the Mechanical Engineering Department in Fluid Dynamics, Junior Design Seminar, and Senior Design Seminar. The department will also use the tool to streamline performance of existing teams.

Procedure

Step 1: Perform background research on rubrics as well as teaming rubrics to best utilize the existing research. This will utilize the abilities of all team members for about an hour each.

Step 2: Using a focus group, brainstorm the essential elements of effective teaming practice. This will be done with all the members of team LED.

Step 3: Synthesize this brainstorm into the key traits of best team practices, and evaluate this list against Westra’s research. This will be done with all LED members.

Step 4: Create teaming rubric 1.0. This will be done by Jon Miller.

Step 5: Test rubric for “student voice” readiness by meeting with several student focus groups. This will enhance use of the rubric as a teaching tool in the future. This will be done by team LED and others recommended by Michael Kyte.

Step 6: Develop a presentation summarizing our findings and delivering the product. This will be done primarily by Jon Miller.

Deliverables

1.  An analytical trait rubric with 4 to 6 main traits, each subdivided into approximately 4 to 6 main elements. Five levels of performance will be defined. The complete rubric will be approximately 4 to 6 pages long

2.  A technical report, approximately 4 pages long, that describes the creation and refining of the rubric

3.  Written instructions for application of the rubric

4.  Two-hours of direct instruction (by Professor Elger) will be provided. This instruction will be presented at the convenience of Professor Kyte.

Conclusion

Teams have become an integral part of learning and working within the engineering world. To be able to assess and evaluate the effectiveness of teams is essential to the constant improvement of these teams. The rubric that is being proposed will fill this need and in the long run improve overall team quality.

References

http://www.its.uidaho.edu/led

Arter, Judith and Jay McTighe. Scoring Rubrics in the Classroom: Using Performance Criteria for Assessing and Improving Student. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press, 2001.

Appendix 1

Cost to NIATT:

Time frame / Action / Hours / Cost/hour / Total Cost
Week 1 / Research rubric methodology / 10 / $10.00 / $100.00
Develop rubric 1.0 / 10 / $10.00 / $100.00
Test rubric 1.0 / 10 / $10.00 / $100.00
Review and refine 1.0 / 10 / $10.00 / $100.00
Week 2 / Repeat testing and refining / 50 / $10.00 / $500.00
Develop documentation/presentation / 10 / $10.00 / $100.00
Project Overhead / $450.00
TOTAL COST / $1450.00