TeamworkModule Details

Objectives of the Course:

The main purpose of this course is to enable students participate effectively in teams
and other collaborative processes and to proactively support and promote collaboration.
This course provides a theoretical base for identifying and understanding how teams are
organized and structured, team dynamics, team building and functional requirements of
effective teamwork. It examines features common to both interdisciplinary and
interorganizational collaboration. Also, it explores distinctions among multidisciplinary,
interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary teams. Finally, the course emphasizes intensive
experiential skill development to effectively engage the main challenges teams face, that
is, the distribution and use of power, conflict resolution, decision making, problem
solving, creativity and valuing diversity.

Learning Outcomes:

1. Maximize the opportunities and mediate the constraints inherent in interdisciplinary
team efforts;
2. Facilitate meaningful participation of team members;
3. Identify how the dynamics of power, social influence and culture in teams affect
leadership behavior, member interactions, the impact of minorities and interpersonal
influence;
4. To assess sources of conflict on a team and identify the team’s dominant mode of
responding to conflict;
5. To envision and effectively introduce integrative solutions to conflict which
threatens to undermine the efficacy of the team;
6. To identify factors which improve and impede problem-solving and decision
making by the team, and apply team-oriented approached to problem-solving and
decision-making which are most appropriate to achieving on team process;
7. To identify team norms and recognize their influence on team process;
8. To recognize how stages of development affect a team’s productive capacity and
role behavior;
9. To observe, evaluate and influence team communication patterns and climate in
ways which optimize interpersonal trust and information processing;
10. To assess his/her own performance and growth as a team member and contributor;
11. To identify relevant differences between cross-functional and interdisciplinary
teams and their practical implications for participation.