Advice for Mentors

Following is advice on how to deal with potential implementation problems with the course:

Team Conflicts

A student in the group doesn’t carry his or her own weight, or the team is experiencing conflicts between team members for other reasons.

Advice:

• Ask the team to send a weekly status report. They should include a “concerns” section in the report to help provide an indicator of tension.
• Check in with the teams often--at least once a week--so that you can spot any tension building up between team members. You can also call individual team members—two or three from each team--during a task to get individual impressions.
• Talk to the teams about the importance of surfacing and resolving issues early, instead of letting them fester. If tension impacts the team performance, all team members will suffer, so it is in everyone’s best interest to surface and resolve issues as they arise. Also, remind students that this class is just like the real world, and that being able to work with teammates, even difficult teammates (or superiors), is often a reality and requirement as a security technician. They should be encouraged try to work out difficult situations and hone their conflict management skills. (If this doesn’t work, you should intervene.)
• Make it clear to students at the beginning of the course that there is a course counselor, who is not involved in grading and is a neutral party, who can help mediate conflict. If you want to keep this person within the fiction of the course, you can introduce him/her as C-Bay’s VP of HR.
• If there is a low-performing student who is not completing his or her share of the work, you might want to ask that individual to submit his/her work separately from the team’s work.Problem:
• Some students don’t possess the correct prerequisite skills, so teams experience conflict because team members are at very different skill levels.

Grouping Students

We suggest grouping students according to skill level whenever possible. It is our experience that grouping students homogeneously according to skill level produces more successful results than grouping high-level students with lower-level students. If students are working with other students at their level, they are more likely to be working at a pace that is appropriate for them. They are also less likely to feel self-conscious about their skill level, or frustrated by students who are “holding them back.”

Grading

We suggest giving students a base group grade using the rubrics provided for each task, and then making adjustments to the base grade according to individual contributions, using the 360-degree evaluation forms as inputs. So, for example, a team might have an overall grade of “B” for their efforts, but one individual on the team may have contributed heavily and been a support to their peers, so he/she will receive a “B+”.

Another suggestion is providing students with only their rubric assessments until the end of the course, and then providing a letter grade after Task 6, based on the total performance of the team over the span of the course. This helps students to focus on their work, rather than on their grades. If several mentors are involved in the course, it is best to assign grades collaboratively.

Note: If the counselor has been identified as an impartial, neutral party, it is important not to involve him or her in the grading process.