Teamwork Minutes brings authenticity to learning teamwork in project settings. Teams discuss and negotiate team relationships, goals, processes, and work practices as they address project challenges. This gives every team member a stake in the discussions and the opportunity to shape the team to meet individual and team goals. As a result, the team benefits from the perspectives and contributions of every member, not just the powerful few.Teamwork Minutes is structured to incorporate brief team-focused discussions into regular team meetings. Each exercise raises a topic for discussion, addressing team management, team relationships, team communication, working together, or working alone. Questions focus the discussion on common issues related to the topic. Each exercise is seeded with a time-honored principle. The exercise ends with identification of actions to be taken to advance the team toward improved performance. Why just learn about teamwork and issues of concern? Teamwork Minutes builds team cohesion, practical teamwork understanding, and enjoyable team work that yields lasting results. Investing a few minutes under the mentoring of Teamwork Minutes will produce exceptional performance and team skills that transfer into future team settings.
About the Author: Dr. Denny C. Davis is Emeritus Professor of Engineering Education at Washington State University. He has engaged university student teams in design project activities for over thirty years, finding keys to success in building diverse, multidisciplinary teams that benefit from all members' abilities, interests, and energy. Dr. Davis has worked with engineering educators across the US to create instructional materials and assessments for teamwork done in the context of design projects. The exercises contained in Teamwork Minutes apply principles of how people learn to achieve individual and group learning as teams do their work. This makes teamwork learning and assessment authentic to professional practice, so what is learned readily transfers into the professional workplace. Dr. Davis has been recognized locally, nationally, and internationally for teaching excellence and engineering education scholarship related to engineering design education. He received faculty excellence awards for teaching and engineering education research at Washington State University. He is a life member and Fellow of the American Society for Engineering Education.