Find below two authentic assignments designed to help students track and reflect on their work. These assignments also make explicit student work around the learning outcomes for TWC.
Adapted from “Management Communications for Undergraduates” (15.279), Sloan School of Management, MIT, by Dr. Lori Breslow, 2000.
Instructions: This form is to help you manage your work and team interactions. Fill out a form after each in-class team meeting. List the person who facilitated the meeting and the things you accomplished. Be as specific as possible. Then list the tasks you still need to do, including who will do what by what deadline. Keep one form for yourself and give one to me.
Team Members:
Date:
Facilitator:
Tasks Accomplished:
Things to Do (include meetings, tasks, person(s) to accomplish tasks, deadlines):
Any problems the group needs to deal with?
Assignment Purposes
Logistical:
Pedagogical, i.e., what you will learn from this assignment:
Task
Write a memo that is 400 words long, to be submitted every week by _____on _____. The memo has three sections. Team members will take turns being the lead writer.
Criteria
I read your memos to understand how the projects are going, how the teams are working together, and to give you and your team quick feedback. I assess memos as complete or incomplete. Complete memos are at least 400 words and demonstrate thoughtfulness, preparation, and an appropriate level of formality. Incomplete memos are fewer than 400 words and difficult to understand; they may not be organized into sections. Teams that do not submit complete memos may lose credit on the final project.
Marketing/Website Team
Team names:
Lead Writer:
Weekly Progress Memo 1
Work completed
This past week our team has completed all the research we had set out to do. Maria has finished collecting her responses for the survey as well as found a scholarly article about a study that employed a content analysis of the creative strategies present in the social media content and how the social media network and the marketing strategies relate to consumer engagement. It found that a key aspect of social media marketing in relation to consumer engagement is frequent updates and incentives for participation. Sarah found an article on social media marketing. Emily has also finished collecting survey responses and found an article which explores online presence, focusing on coupons and their effectiveness level. Finally, Steve has conducted a SWOT analysis on Smoke’s Poutinerie. We have met as a group and briefed each other on our findings. At this past meeting we also devised a plan for writing the final report. We will work on the result and discussion sections in teams of two. Maria and Emily will write the results section, it will then be revised by Steve and Sarah. Vice versa for the discussion section. This way everyone has a say on what is in each section, there is also benefit in it being reviewed by new eyes than those who wrote it.
Plan for next week
Maria and Emily will book a day to meet and write the results section of the report. In preparation for this each group member is tasked to provide a summary of the research they completed in order to facilitate this section for Mariaand Emily. The plan is to have the results section complete before the 6th so that Sarah and Steve have time to review it before its final deadline.
Current challenges
I think our main challenge now is to stray away from creating a marketing plan and stick to creating a report. Since all team members are invested in the project we catch ourselves getting carried away with the idea of creating a marketing plan now and then. We try to keep each other on track when this happens by reminding each other of the assignment at hand. Group dynamics are still strong. Everyone is completing their tasks on time and is consistently and regularly responding in the group chat that we have created. Since everyone has their own schedule to take into account I suspect challenges to arise when planning times to meet. Maria and I are assuming more than one meeting will be required to write the methods section, or one very long meeting session, which could be hard to schedule.
Marketing/Website Team
Team names
Lead Writer:
Work completed: This week we focused on collecting data and research to narrow our ideas. We sent out a survey to students on campus asking questions both about the CAPS (Counseling and Psychological Services) program and about the mental health stigma on campus in general. The survey started off with questions about how familiar the students were with the program, and it later went into specifics about their experiences. We are still collecting data and reaching out to as large of an audience as we can; however, the results so far have not deviated much from our expectations. Most respondents either have had little experience with CAPS or have had negative experiences. We have started reaching out to people who would be willing to be interviewed about their experiences with the program, and we plan on conducting those interviews this coming week.
Current challenges: Our struggle at the beginning of the project was choosing a specific audience, and from our survey results we are leaning towards targeting our findings to the CAPS staff. Since many students feel passionately about their experiences with CAPS, we think that directing our report towards them could be the most beneficial. In contrast to our project itself, however, group dynamics have not yet been a challenge for our group. Each member has proven themselves to be an equal contributor to the project, and we don’t currently foresee any issues moving forward.
With results from 15+ respondents thus far, we can conclude that students are, in fact, in great need of an on-campus mental health service, especially considering that the majority of respondents admitted to suffering from some form of mental illness. One interesting thing to note is that although 93% of our respondents have heard of CAPS, 60% of them do not even know what CAPS stands for. Although students seem to be aware of the resource, few seem to understand its true purpose and benefits. One chief complaint from students who have used CAPS before is that the wait for treatment is too long. This negative perception and difficult barrier to entry seems to polarize many students against the service, as well as make them think that they were foolish to attempt to overcome MHS and seek treatment in the first place. Improper treatment is another chief complaint, and one respondent even said that when they spoke to CAPS about their severe depression and suicidal thoughts, they were merely handed a pamphlet in return. In addition, from the few conversations that we have had so far with peers who have tried CAPS, we have learned that many students have avoided speaking to a CAPS professional when needing someone to talk to.
Plan for next week: To reiterate our immediate next steps, we plan to use our research to figure out ways to formulate a more optimal CAPS experience for undergraduate students, and we shall address our findings to the staff at CAPS in order to recommend program revisions. Within the next week, we plan to continue circulating our student survey while simultaneously conducting interviews with interested students and CAPS staff. We hope to conclude the research phase of our project by the end of the week and begin the final report at that time – hence leaving plenty of time for our upcoming written deadlines as posted on Canvas.