Team Members

• Clif Kussmaul, Muhlenberg College
• Susannah Howe, Smith College

Overview

This team will identify best practices for fostering collaboration in teams that span multiple disciplines and/or institutions. Especially at smaller institutions, E-Teams are likely to span disciplines, and even institutions. Distributed teams are also increasingly common in industry. We will focus on the following:

• A life-cycle model for collaborative teams, likely based on existing models such as Tuckman’s forming-storming-norming-performing
• Appropriate tools and techniques to support collaboration, with an emphasis on open source software, and other free or low-cost collaboration tools.
• Guidelines, tutorials, and activities to identify tools appropriate in particular situations, to introduce teams to tools, to help teams develop a group identify, and to assess and improve their effectiveness working together.

Before the working meeting, we will review existing resources, draft a life-cycle model, and use several tools and techniques to support all of the teams in this proposal. (For example, we are using a Yahoo discussion group.) At the working meeting, we will present draft materials and pilot some of the activities and workshops. In the fall, we will expand and revise the materials, test them in courses, and put the resulting materials on the web site. Next spring, we will present workshops to help faculty at other institutions adopt these best practices.