Session Four: Managing and Building Teams

This session discussed the importance of a solid project plan, good intentions, clearly articulated responsibilities, and a set of helpful strategies to form collaborative alliances. Different perspectives, talents, and efforts support your OER projects in unique ways, beyond just distributing the workload!

However, good teams don’t just create themselves; they need deliberate communication, cultivation and management (including problem-solving and conflict resolution) on the parts of all members, but particularly those in leading roles, e.g. project manager, technology lead, etc. This also includes modeling being an active, engaged team member and promoting self-care throughout the project. We must all model what we want to see in our classrooms, work places, or communities!

You started to see the unique nature of your respective teams in last week’s “Share your personal story activity.” In this session, you leveraged this knowledge to identify particular roles and assign specific responsibilities to one another. Please make sure to come to an agreement around team roles at your next scheduled team meeting. To help guide and document your decision-making, refer to the session template: Roles and Responsibilities. These roles may shift over time, but it’s critical you begin your project work with clear expectations on roles and responsibilities

Instructions for next week’s 1:1 meetings.

Next week, each team will meet with me individually for 15 minutes. This will give us the opportunity to talk about your projects in more detail, and for me as your facilitator to more clearly understand what you are working towards. I will spend some time reviewing your project summary and homepage before we meet, so I can guide your teams in their next steps.

I would like one member of each team to book a time for you and your team to meet with me. Please fill out this sign-up sheet CUNY TSP Sign-up Sheet 1:1 - Google Sheets to book your 1:1 meeting, and be sure to answer all the questions to help me adequately prepare for our conversation! I look forward to these personalised 1:1s meetings next week, and to learn about how to better support your work.

Here is a link to the chat transcript from Session Four