Team-building Activities
Collaboration is the cornerstone of student-led learning. After all, two heads are better than one! Collaboration allows us to know more than we are capable of knowing by ourselves.
Collaboration is in our mission — "execute bold ideas together." Students work effectively and respectfully with partners and small groups. They can share responsibility for group projects and work toward a common goal or solution. Students work together on a variety of projects, while understanding that the group can accomplish more than the individual.
Below are strategies that we use to facilitate collaboration in our coding teams.
Contents
"We're in this together!"
It's imperative that mentors work hard to immediately foster and then maintain a sense of community in the group. Start by communicating to them, "We're not just a class. We're a crew! We're in this together!" Your crew, or team, is like a family . You look out for and help one another. Even when you disagree and argue, you show one another respect and quickly forgive and forget. You have one another's back - no one stands alone. Your crew is like a company . Every team member is important, and you rely on one another to work together. Your company is innovative - working together to create something amazing.
Pair Programming
Did you know that computer science is social and collaborative? At Bold Idea, one of the things that we firmly believe in is the value of collaboration and learning from each other, especially when coding. Pair programming is one way we do this — when two students share one computer to write a program. Pair programming has been shown to reduce the so-called “confidence gap” between female and male students, while increasing programming confidence for all students.
Icebreakers & Team-building Games
Icebreakers and team-building games are used to begin a session or activity and help participants focus on the topic at hand or simply puts them at ease, ie "breaking the ice". Warm-ups can literally take thousands of forms, from everyone going around the room and telling the group what their favorite musical group is to people sharing why the came to [the group]. Often you can select a warm-up that relates in some way to the meeting topic. For example, if your meeting is about planning service, ask people to share their favorite service experience. Conversely, you may want to select a game to play half-way through your Bold Idea session to give students a mental break between coding activities. [1]
See Icebreakers for an extensive list of activity ideas.
Project Teams
Early in the semester, mentors should switch student partners frequently (once per project). A some point, you will learn which students work well together. Use your best judgement.
During the creative project, keep student teams together for the entire project, unless a student needs to be removed from the team due to behavior issues .
Pro tips:
- Friends don't always work well together.
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Pair students who have a similar and same skill level.