We have all worked on a group project and found that your group could not accomplish an objective as efficiently as possible. Sometimes the problem is that your group-mates cannot agree on a basic part of the project. Other times a problem stems from members who take too many creative liberties or those who are not willing to take any at all. Some members fail to contribute because they do not see a reason to. As they are, these individuals would make a weak team. However, if we balance each of these people’s mannerisms to highlight their strengths, we can create ideal teams for completing a project, such as our class’s final group project.
My first experience with teams built around their members’ personal traits came in the fall of my freshman year. Composition I professor, the now-retired Dr. Donald Stoll, utilized these attributes, which he saw as learning patterns, to combine me and my peers into efficient teams. He used an online service called Learning Connections Inventory to gauge each individual’s stronger patterns. Students at Rowan all have access to this test for free through their Rowan Self-Service accounts. The Learning Connections Inventory, LCI for short, examines four learning patterns: Precise, Sequential, Technical Reasoning, and Confluent. Precise patterns value accuracy and want to know exactly what is going on, Sequential patterns seek order and consistency, Technical patterns desire practicality and independence, and Confluent patterns rely on intuition and do not like to follow rules. Though we all use each pattern, most people have one or two that they utilize most.
It is easy to visualize how a team of Sequential people could argue about each other’s methods and take too long planning and not enough time acting. A Precise team would likely pay too much attention to details on step one and never produce a product in time. A team of Technical individuals might not want to work together at all. Confluent people would fail to follow rules and create something that does not fit the criteria.
However, all of these patterns have comparable strengths in their own right. Sequential people are good at planning and keeping Confluent members in line; Precise members will raise important questions and add details that Technical members might find unimportant; Technical individuals would find practical application for your project and would examine purpose where Sequential people would otherwise blindly accept parts of a process; finally, Confluent people bring a different perspective to work and could draw Precise members away from detail to keep a steady rate of progress.
In short, a strong team is composed of members who dominate in each of the four different learning patterns. But what about LCI makes it more valuable than a Meyers-Briggs test? I found the answer to this question as a direct result of my own confluence. While scrolling down the Let Me Learn webpage (letmelearn.org), the organization that created the LCI, my eye caught their headquarters address. It is in Glassboro! With only 45 minutes before my next class started, I quickly recruited my friend Alex and his car to take me to Let Me Learn’s headquarters. We arrived in no-time at Let Me Learn Inc. where we met Executive Director Joel Johnston. He described to us how a person’s personality is much more fickle than their learning pattern. We also discussed how each pattern manifests itself in people and what they would bring to a group.
After our discussion with one of Learning Connections Inventory’s creators, it was evident that this would be an easy way to maximize our class’s potential for creating an outstanding project. Every Rowan student already has LCI results available online in their Rowan Self-Service account! I propose we use LCIs to chose groups in class, and judge how effectively our groups function to accomplish our objective. This practice would be effective outside of the classroom as well, employers would be able to better allot jobs and create teams for jobs if they know the learning patterns of their employees.
- Developing Metacognitive Engineering Teams by James Newell, Kevin Dahm, Roberta Harvey, and Heidi Newell of Rowan University http://www.rowan.edu/colleges/engineering/clinics/asee/papers/2004/3213-newell.pdf
- A Teambuilding Model for the Educational Leadership Classroom by Patricia Ann Marcellino of Adelphi University
http://www.letmelearn.org/wp-content/uploads/a_teambuilding_model_for_the_educational_leadership_classroom.pdf - Personal Interviews with Joel Johnston and Dr. Donald Stoll on LCI
No comments:
Post a Comment