Debbie Clark's 8th grade science students take several days to complete their Rube Goldberg contraptions. Bringing things from home, they experiment with the parts, design their contraption, and make a blueprint for it before beginning to build. This is a lesson that emphasizes cooperation, teamwork, creativity and design.

Students apply the mechanical advantages and problem-solving capabilities of six types of simple machines (wedge, wheel and axle, lever, inclined plane, screw, pulley) as they discuss modern structures in the spirit of the engineers and builders of the great pyramids. While learning the steps of the engineering design process, students practice teamwork, creativity and problem solving.

This course examines the issues, principles, and challenges toward building machines that cooperate with humans and with other machines. Philosophical, scientific, and theoretical insights into this subject will be covered, as well as how these ideas are manifest in both natural and artificial systems (e.g. software agents and robots).

Faculty members interested in pursuing group assignments can use this form to facilitate accountability between group members. Group members justify the contributions of team members, provide examples of teamwork, and appropriate team behaviors. Team members rate each other on a four point scale. I have worked with various faculty members at Palo Alto College to create this form, which is used when assessing the teamwork general education competency across the institution.

This unit plan is designed to spark students’ interest in critical thinking and scientific discovery. This unit is based on the book, “Survival of the Sickest: A medical maverick discovers why we need disease” by Jonathan Prince and Sharon Moalem. The book explores the evolution of different diseases throughout its eight chapters. The lesson plan is designed to take about 21 days (50-minute class periods). For this book, the class reads the Prologue together. Then, groups of students are assigned a chapter that they will teach to the class. Their teaching will include a presentation, activity, and facilitated discussion. (The unit plan helps the students learn how to do each of these tasks.) A final project is included at the end of the unit - a book review of the entire book.  The summative grade for this unit is multi-part - the teaching assignment and the book review. Three quizzes are included, which would also be small summative grades. The notes packets and teaching planning sheets are all formative grades. A team member peer review is another part of the project. 

A classic teamwork activity. Small teams build towers out of LEGO bricks -- with some caveats or rule variations to challenge their teamwork &/or creativity.

Learn about the countries and agencies that worked together to build and work in the ISS, then challenge your students to collaborate in a virtual breakout room.

Team Challenges are activities intended to develop and/or apply the following skills: Problem Solving - Appropriate Risk Taking - Developing Working Relationships - Cooperation - Leadership - Communication - Creative Thinking - Building of Trust - Decision Making - Goal Setting - Physical Skill Development

The Team Project has the goals of (1) developing teamwork and leadership skills and (2) learning from the analysis of a change initiative in a real-world company using concepts from other core courses. This class has no regular class schedule or weekly readings. Almost everything is oriented around your team and your project, with only a few deadlines. Each team is responsible for analyzing a recent, ongoing, or anticipated initiative at a real company. Examples might be a strategic reorientation, organizational restructuring, introduction of a new technology, or worker participation program.
This course is closely integrated with other MBA core classes: readings are assigned through Organizational Processes (15.311) and oral presentations are given in Communication for Managers (15.280).

A rubric in student language written for middle school students to self-assess individual roles in a team.

Secondary educators across Lebanon County, Pennsylvania developed lesson plans to integrate the Pennsylvania Career Education and Work Standards with the content they teach. This work was made possible through a partnership between the South Central PA Workforce Investment Board (SCPa Works) and Lancaster-Lebanon Intermediate Unit 13 (IU13) and was funded by a Teacher in the Workplace Grant Award from the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry. This lesson plan was developed by one of the talented educators who participated in this project during the 2018-2019 school year.

Technology Policy Organizations and its sequel, ESD.933, Technology Policy Negotiations and Dispute Resolution, form a sequence on Organizational Processes in Technology Policy. This course features an overall framework for understanding the increasingly networked, flat, flexible and diverse nature of organizations, as well as a close look at the many relevant types of organizations, including regulatory, entrepreneurial, multi-national, and non-governmental non-profit. Key organizational processes, including individual motivation, teamwork, and systems change are featured. The core assignment features a series of industry studies in which students conduct field interviews (in phone or in person) of key stakeholders on a pressing policy challenge in that industry and analyze the impact of organizational factors on policy success.

Student teams act as engineers and learn about systems thinking and scale by reassembling the separated pages of the engaging picture book, “Zoom,” by Istvan Banyai. The book is a series of 31 wordless pictures that start very close-up and then zoom out—from a rooster’s comb to outer space. Like a movie camera, each subsequent page pulls back to reveal the context of the previous scene as something different than what you originally thought. When the 31 un-numbered pages are jumbled, it is a surprising challenge for teams to figure out how the pictures connect. The task prompts students to pause and look closer so as to adjust to new points of view and problem solve to find a logical sequence. It requires them to step back and take a broader view. Students learn that engineers work together as teams and look at things very closely so that they see different things and come up with more than one solution when problem solving. To conclude, students go outside and practice their skills by imagining and then drawing their own Zoom-like small booklet stories inspired by items found in nature. The classic duck/rabbit ambiguous drawing is provided as a kickoff visual aid.