Work collaboratively, including the ability to
participate effectively in teams;
consider different points of view; and
work with others to support a shared purpose or goal.
Draw from your academic courses, job-related experiences, and even your extracurricular activities to demonstrate this competency by describing your contribution as a productive team member and/or by describing what you have learned about teamwork from the teams on which you have participated.
A. What? Identify and Analyze Positive and Negative Team Experiences
Identify a team in which you have participated that worked well together to accomplish its mission. What characteristics contributed to its success? (In other words, why did it work?)
Identify a team in which you have participated that did NOT work well. What characteristics contributed to its unproductivity? (Why did it not work?)
Identify characteristics of productive and unproductive teams. List and describe these characteristics with supporting examples from the experiences you have identified or from resources that support your findings (for example, readings or class discussions).
B. So what? Evaluate Your Findings to Determine Why Some Teams Work Better than Others
Based on your observations, why do you think some teams work better than others? What makes a productive team? an unproductive team?
C. Now what? Transfer What You Have Learned into New Contexts
What have you learned about working collaboratively that will transfer into new contexts? For example, what have you learned about how you can you offset the potential cons of teamwork and provide incentives for capitalizing on the pros? Provide examples from your collaborative project, other team experiences, previous reflections, and class discussions to develop your response. Attach a management or work plan, team contract, self-evaluation, performance evaluation by team leader or any other artifact to support your reflection.
Additional questions to consider regarding what you have learned from teamwork:
What were you expected to do (or learn) to perform the tasks as communicated by the project guidelines?
What challenges or conflicts did you (or your team) encounter?
How did you resolve them or what was your part in how they were resolved?
Did you identify methods of involving each team member to solve problems, make decisions, build consensus, resolve or manage conflicts, negotiate compromises, support self-expression, and bring forth new ideas and opinions? Explain.
Did you determine ways to motivate team members? What were they? Did they work? Explain.
How did your teammates evaluate your contribution to the project? What did you do well? What areas were identified that you will work to improve in your next team (or workplace) project?
How have you used various technologies to collaborate with your team to complete a project? Which technologies did you use? Why? How did you learn them? How well did they work to do what you needed them to do? Did you discover uses/benefits/consequences you had not intended? How do you see yourself using these or similar tools in the future?
Tip:
Be sure to secure permission to use collaborative or proprietary work. In other words, make sure that your teammates (and businesses and organizations) agree to your using their work in your portfolio. Also, indicate in the portfolio and with the artifact that permission has been granted. Doing so will demonstrate that you are responsible with proprietary information and that you respect other’s privacy.