Collaboration Guidelines

Collaborating with others requires a variety of important skills. You will be provided more specific details about collaborative assignments throughout the course. For now, just keep in mind that a significant portion of your course grade will be determined by collaborative work. Whether you want to or not, you will have to learn how to collaborate with others to succeed in this class. In the "real world," you won't have any choice either.

Some General Protocols for Successful Collaboration

Communicate regularly with your team. Exchange phone numbers at the beginning of the semester so that you can contact each other even during network outages. Check your class mail and team discussions daily.

Keep up with team deadlines. Many projects will have several deadlines in the same week. If you post your work late, your entire team will suffer.

Address problems quickly. Little can be done to fix a situation several weeks after the fact. Because of this, little sympathy will be given to teams who drift along, failing to address problems until right before a team deadline. If your team encounters problems such as members failing to meet deadlines, take steps to resolve the problem. At the very least, contact people to try to find out why they aren't meeting their responsibilities.

Ensure that all team members contribute equally. Whenever possible, take the time to plan in advance who will do which tasks for your team. If you find yourself doing more than your fair share, don't just suffer in silence. Talk to your team about the problem. Maybe some of the work can be delegated to others; maybe some of the work is not necessary.

Be willing to compromise when necessary. Devise a method early for resolving disagreements. For example, if you have a three-member team, a simple majority vote could settle any particular issue.

Treat your team members courteously and professionally at all times. For example, if someone on your team sends you a message, respond promptly. If your team decides to use the chat feature of WebCT to discuss issues, make sure you are online when you're supposed to be.

Evaluating Team Members

At the beginning of the semester, your team will develop a list of criteria for evaluating other team members.

At the end of the semester, you will use these criteria to assign a grade to each of the people on your team for teamwork. More details about the grade will be distributed later in the semester.

In Case of Problems in Your Group

Document all problems as they happen by sending class mail to all the members of your team and to Dr. Young. Your message should include a complete account of both what went wrong and what your team did to try to fix the problem. For example, if someone in your team failed to attend a scheduled meeting, your mail should explain:

how the meeting was planned
how members were notified of the meeting
which team member failed to attend
how the team attempted to contact that person to learn the reason for the absence
what the results of that contact were

This mail message should be sent within two days of the problem to everyone in the team, including the absent team member, and to Dr. Young.

If one member of your team continually causes problems and your team can't stand it anymore, you can vote that member out of your team. Here's how: An mail message asking for a vote should be sent to all members of the team and to Dr. Young. This message should list all documented problems within the team, and all actions already taken to solve those problems. The problem member will have two days to reply to the message with his or her side of the story. After all sides have had a chance to be heard, Dr. Young will call for a vote by secret ballot (mail sent only to Dr. Young). If a two-thirds majority of team members agree, the person will be removed from the team.

If someone is removed from a team, Dr. Young will explain to all involved how to proceed with the assignments in the course.