Caution About Teams

As we’ve worked with teams in Discussions, we‘ve found some interesting idiosyncrasies which can best be described using a specific example.

Students must be cautioned to know and select the correct team for each forum in which they post in order for the system to work as expected.

ANGEL allows the student to see their postings (based on their drop-down menu selection) for any team in which they are a member, without regard to the current Forum selected. That is; you can select a forum, and then select a team that is not appropriate for that forum from a drop-down menu/list. Example

• A student is assigned to Team A for Forum A and Team B for Forum B.
• The instructor assumes that when working on Forum B, the student and other team members will only see postings by other students on Team B.
• Because the student is enrolled in more than one team (for different forums), she has a drop-down menu that enables her to view and post to either Team A or Team B.
• The option to post to either Team A or Team B opens the possibility that she could respond to Forum B after selecting Team A. If this occurs, other students who are only on Team B will not see her post.
• The instructor’s assumption is that anyone assigned to Team A for Forum A will only see postings by their team members. The same assumption holds for students assigned to Team B for Forum B without regard to team assignments for other projects/forums.
• If a student selects a team to which they are not assigned for a given forum (e.g., they select Team A for a posting in Forum B), their postings are not visible to other members of the assigned team (Team B)…which gives the impression that the posting disappeared.
• The posting is still available but not visible unless the student later selects the incorrect team (Team A) for the forum (Forum B).

For instructors who use new groups for each discussion or each new unit, here’s a suggestion. Consider naming the teams to correspond to the assignment or the unit; such as, “Narrative Team 1,” Narrative Team 2,” and so on. Then, students would have “Narrative” in only one of their team names, and they could select that “narrative” team for any discussion that has “Narrative” in its title or for any discussion in the “Narrative” unit. Students would then have a list of meaningful team names rather than generic team names (such as Team A, Team B, Group 1 and so on). It would also mean the instructions in the discussion wouldn’t have to be personalized; you, as the instructor could tell students to select their “Narrative” team, for example.