Every fall, I assign a group project that I call Who Makes the Team? I designed the project for my Families, Professionals, and Communities course so that my students could develop a deeper understanding of the roles and responsibilities of an individual education plan (IEP) team or an individual family service plan (IFSP) team. My desire was for the information that they read in the textbook to become real as I knew that it might be some time before they would experience participating in the IEP or IFSP process as a member of a team.
The assignment, divided into three parts, gives students the opportunity to research a role and to interview someone who fulfills the role. It also requires them to present and discuss their findings as a group during a live class session.
Each year, I am fascinated by how well my students execute this assignment and what they learn from the experience. As a result, I have assigned this project for about ten years.
An additional and meaningful component of this assignment is the WMTT Questionnaire that allows them to “process the process” when it is all said and done. I enjoy listening to them share the revelations, the challenges, the insights, the epiphanies, the discoveries that incur from the interview, and whether or not the information from their research contradicts or confirms what the interviewees reveal about their experiences.
Well, I did a lot of thinking about this assignment and how it might be applicable for you even if you do not teach Families, Professionals, and Communities or any other course related to special education or teacher preparation. The ideas that flooded my mind began to excite me, so I decided to share this project with you.
Teams seem to run the world.
Think about it. There are so many teams in every field—teams that serve to make things work.
Every single field, industry, discipline involves some type of teamwork. Isn’t that incredible? So, it would behoove us to prepare our students for the inevitable. Yes, even in our online courses, it is our responsibility to include collaborative ventures in our courses.
In this video, I breakdown one of my favorite projects as the first one in a series of six that I will share. I hope that it inspires you to incorporate it into one of your courses. You may already do something very similar and I would love to “hear” about it. Share your thoughts here or go to YouTube and let me know what you think.
And, just in case you want to read the LinkedIn report that I referenced in the video, here is the link: https://learning.linkedin.com/blog/learning-thought-leadership/most-in-demand-skills-2020.
Wishing you well as you create dynamic learning communities online!