Using a Flipped Classroom to Teach the Group Dynamics Course

Group Dynamics is a course in which the students are put into teams (Executive Team, Teaching Team, Review Team, Energizer Team and Feedback Team). During the class, they undertake team-specific roles as well as individual roles (Leader, Recorder, Reporter and Participant/Analyst). There are five teams, and the practice is to do five rotations (two classes each) so that each team gets to try out every role twice. Additionally, within each team, there are four different roles, and they, too, rotate so that every team member gets to try every role. Completion of two classes is known as a rotation.

Team Roles

Whenever people gather together for workshops, seminars, or conferences, someone or some group provides leadership and direction for the attendees. Within the experiential learning model, the Executive Team has this responsibility, much like an emcee. A good facilitator welcomes and seats attendees, ensures each person has the necessary resources for the event (e.g., agenda and timelines), makes people feel comfortable, and co-ordinates all event details. In the experiential model, the Executive Team serves as the facilitator for the class session.

The Teaching Team is responsible for developing and implementing a meaningful, creative, and memorable lesson from the textbook chapter assigned for that class (generally 30 to 45 minutes long, depending on the agenda the Executive team has set out). The team will plan the timing and sequencing of the learning experiences and guide the class through all teaching activities (e.g., discussion, demonstrations, worksheets). Lecturing is only one small part of a good class; indeed, since students learn best by doing, the intent of this exercise is to give students an opportunity to apply what they have learned. Therefore, the teaching team is tasked with creating an experiential exercise that applies the knowledge from the textbook in an engaging manner that involves the participants. Moreover, the experiential exercise must take up a minimum of 50% of the time allotted for the lesson so that straight lecturing is not the norm.

A good facilitator assists students in reviewing the material taught in previous lessons. This is particularly important when the subject matter of the course is interrelated and cumulative. Usually, the facilitator conducts the review at or near the beginning of a new class session. The Lesson Review Team has the responsibility in this experiential learning model for reviewing the key concepts and ideas from the previous class’s chapter. The review is brief (15 minutes), so it will focus on the most important material from the previous chapter.

Team building is becoming a common practice in the workplace. The Energizer Team will lead the class in a short exercise designed to engage the entire class in an activity that energizes individuals and encourages class cohesion (10–15 minutes). This exercise must relate to the chapter being taught that day. The energizer activity can be lively and active, or it can be contemplative and meditative. Regardless of emphasis, the activity must always be inclusive, safe, quiet, and professional.

One of the most important aspects of personal and professional development in group life is the ongoing assessment of individual and group performance. Effective teams measure their performance in terms of both task and social goals. The Feedback Team is responsible for assisting the class in measuring its performance in both these areas. The Feedback Team is responsible for planning an activity that permits all teams and individuals to assess what went well in the class and to determine areas for further development.

Individual Roles

In the experiential model, every student serves as Team Leader at some point in the course. Each class session has time set aside (the third hour) for teams to meet and do their planning. While the Team Leader will play a key role during those meetings, they are not responsible for completing all of the work. The following are the specific responsibilities of the Team Leader:

• Call team meetings as required.
• Chair team meetings.
• Develop an agenda and send it out before meetings.
• Ensure that individual members carry out their responsibilities and the team carries out its responsibilities.
• Communicate with other team leaders as necessary.
• Review all group reports and ensure they are properly completed.
• Collect all individual reports at the end of the rotation, including their own leader memorandum, and compile them into a single professional report, including a cover page and a separate reference page.

A written record of group discussions and decisions is very important. Groups of all sizes, in virtually all circumstances, do well to maintain a written record of their meetings. In this experiential model, the Team Recorder performs this function for the team.  A record is kept for all group meetings, for those held in class and for the meetings held outside class time, including electronic meetings. The emphasis is placed on accurately recording the discussions and decisions made by the group. Recorders must use full, clear, and concise sentences capturing the main ideas discussed and the activities to be carried out.

In the experiential model, the Team Reporter typically gives a status report to the other groups, highlighting the progress of their team development. Sometimes, if a team has solved a problem, it may recommend that other teams avoid the problem by taking a particular course of action. Most often, however, the Team Reporter will inform other teams as to the current status of the team and the challenges they are encountering.

Effective team members carefully observe their team in order to assess two important things. They analyze their team’s progress regarding tasks to be accomplished, and they analyze the team’s social-emotional status. These are the two broad goals of all successful teams: task completion and team development.  To help students learn to analyze their team from these two perspectives, the experiential model requires each student to be a Participant-Analyst at various times throughout the course. Whenever a student is not the Team Leader, Team Reporter, or Team Recorder, they are a Team Participant-Analyst. By requiring each student to keep their own personal record of the team’s progress in the areas of task completion and relationship development, the experiential model encourages team members to monitor these critical aspects of group life. Effective team members know when the team is on or off track in either or both of these areas.

The Role of the Instructor as Consultant

All of the in-class activities in this class take between 1 ½ and 2 hours to complete. The instructor is referred to as the Consultant in this course delivery. Consultants do not teach the lesson or play an active part in the class at all. The Consultant sits back and lets the students run the show. The students must handle any issues or problems that arise without aid from the Consultant (unless there is something dangerous or the class is too noisy). This way, the students learn to handle conflict, deal with issues such as technology failure, set the agenda, and follow a strict schedule for the class. Once the class is over, in whatever time is left, the students go into small groups and plan for the next class. The Consultant visits each team and goes over the successes the team had, as well as any challenges they have encountered. The most important part here is that the Consultant doesn’t solve problems or tell the students what to do; the Consultant simply acts as a guide and mentor, not a problem-solver.

So what exactly does the Consultant do? While students are presenting each class, the Consultant watches and takes notes, focusing on specific criteria/expectations that are found in the information given to students for each team role. Here, the focus is on how the team is doing as a whole and not on the efforts of individual team members, with the exception of the team leader. It is imperative that the team leader guides the team through the role that the team is undertaking during the rotation.

At the end of every class, the Consultant posts their notes to the class’s course shell, so that all teams can see the feedback that the Consultant gave to each team. This allows students the opportunity to learn from one another’s successes and also to learn about areas that need improvement. Students are expected to cite the Consultant Notes in their team reports and in their own Critical Reflection Essay, which is the final assignment in the course and is meant to give the student a chance to reflect on their entire experience in Group Dynamics. This furthers the chances that the students are learning from other teams, as well as their own team, throughout the course.

Practical Application of the Flipped Classroom Model

Rotations

Other crucial pieces of information here include the fact that there is a practice rotation, which is the first rotation of the course. This allows the students to try all aspects of their roles without being concerned that they are going to cause their team to fail. In other words, the first rotation is run as if it is being graded (full feedback and grades are provided so students know what they would have received), but it is not counted in the students’ final grades. Only four rotations count toward grades.

Grading

The assessments are the same across all sections, and they can be found in the course Model Shell–this includes written reports from each team member that detail their own experience in the role. The main portion of the grade (80%) is the grade that the team earns over four rotations.

The final grade is then recalculated to be 20% of the final grade that the team earns together. Please note that all students on the team get the grade the team has earned, except in exceptional circumstances when a team member has either gone above and beyond the rest and deserves a higher grade or they have hindered the efforts of the team in some way, thereby reducing their grade by an amount agreed upon by the team, with the aid of the Consultant.

The final 20% of the grade is made up from a student writing a Critical Reflection Essay. They are given three questions that they must answer by using examples from their own team while drawing on the theory found in the textbook. This is the only graded assessment where the student earns their own grades in this course.