This is an update to a 2018 post, with new details about ordering CATME through the IU eText program.
Do you suspect some of your student teams are not performing at their best? Are your students reporting that they cannot find a time to meet with their group members? Are some complaining that not everyone on their team is doing their fair share of the work? Perhaps CATME software can help you address these issues.
CATME is available through the IU eText program, with a cost of $2 billed to students. Here are some of the CATME tools that can help you take care of some of the administrative headaches of group work.
CATME Team-Maker
This tool allows you decide what student information to collect so that CATME can help you create teams. You choose the criteria to be used and how these are weighted when the system creates teams. You can decide to create heterogeneous or homogeneous groups based on demographics, overall GPA, majors, ability to use a particular software, tool, or language. You can also create teams based on compatible schedules or preferred leadership roles and styles. Other criteria include anticipated grade for your class, earned grade from a previous course and time commitment to the class. You can even create your own questions or select questions from a long list of community-generated questions.
CATME Team Meeting Tools
Many students may not have experience being in structured meetings and/or know how to run these. Using CATME Team Meeting Tools can help team meetings be effective by providing templates for team contracts, meeting agendas, and for taking meeting minutes. By helping students learn how to run effective meetings you might eliminate problematic team behaviors that are limiting team effectiveness.
CATME Rater Practice & CATME Peer Evaluation
CATME is based on research around five dimensions of teamwork, and in addition to some instructional materials about these dimensions, they form the basis for students’ structured peer evaluations of their teammates. But students need practice if they are to accurately and consistently rate their peers based on teamwork-related behaviors. CATME Rater Practice gives students practice using descriptions of fictitious team member behaviors and contributions.
Once your students have had this practice, they can provide one another feedback on their teamwork. You can choose questions related to team member contributions to work, interactions between team members, whether a member is keeping the team on track, whether members have the knowledge and skills to help the team, and many other questions about behaviors that helped or hindered team work, as well as overall team functioning. Student also have the opportunity to leave confidential comments for the instructors. Once students submit feedback about their teammates, instructors can release the results to students, and CATME will provide the student with research-based suggestions for improving their team effectiveness.
CATME is a comprehensive tool for teaching and managing teamwork, so it is better suited for ongoing projects where teamwork skills are part of the course’s desired instructional outcomes. Plus, since there is now a cost to students for CATME, most instructors want to ensure a robust use of the tool, not just for one aspect, like team creation. If you are interested in CATME, you will need to order it through IU eText program (search for CATMETEAMWORK as an ISBN), so it is best to start planning for its use at least a few months ahead of that semester.
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