Hello,
A few weeks ago, I posted a message on this listserv in which I was asking for help finding a team task for a laboratory experiment with undergraduate students, that would meet the following criteria:
- team members need to interact, coordinate, and devise a strategy to accomplish their goal (3-4 members)
- the performance outcomes can be measured in terms of:
(1) creativity and
(2) performance (either quantity or quality of output)
- the task lasts 1-2 hours (1 hour is preferable)
Here's a summary of the answers I received. Thanks very much to everyone who sent me (sometimes very creative!) answers.
I have put people's comments in italics.
1) Desert survival, though measuring creativity could be tricky.
2) Assembling radio task. Reference: Liang, Moreland & Argote (1995)
3) Assembling some puzzle
4) Build a tower out of some set of materials. It can be judged by height, strength, beauty, etc. This one was recommended by many people, with variation in materials and format.
Materials recommended include:
- Simple straight pins and drinking straws
- Tinker Toys
- KNEX toy set
- Lego blocks.
- Marshmallow and spaghetti
- Gummy balls and uncooked spagetti. Instructions: Put about 15-20 gumballs in a small papercup. Take a handful of spagetti (about 1/2 in diameter is more than enough). Hold that bundle together with a pipe cleaner. The cup and pipecleaner can be used but often people don't think of this. Usually gummy balls are broken apart and spagetti is stuck into them. Towers can be 80 some inches high if people are careful and don't break all the spagetti into pieces before they begin. Usually gravity and sloppy building gets in the way of a tall tower and more typically you get 18-50 inches. Give planning time then have them implement the tower building. If you want to add an element of competition then award the highest tower, the most creative...
You will need tape measures and wet papertowels (desks get sticky from the gummy balls).
5) Variation on the k'nex building project: I build a ferris wheel myself, then give each team the challenge to see which team can build it fastest and most accurately. They have to fight for scarce resources (the individual pieces they need), develop a way to communicate about who is building which parts, and also be sure to check the model as they go to ensure accuracy. There are many lessons here about teams that are so busy making sure they have the exact number of each color piece they need that they are slow in actually building (just like teams in companies are often pre-occupied with gathering support or resources and not with focusing on the team task), some teams fail to communicate and end up having two people build the same part, so one of them has wasted their time, some teams are in such a hurry to finish that they make mistakes, etc. It is fun and powerful in that after they are all done we can spin the ferris wheels to see which are structurally sound and which are not (because they have left out key pieces) and what that would mean in real life if they were an actually construction team or any project team at work. My experience with letting students build their own tower is that usually 1 or 2 students take over the creativity for the project and the others don't get as involved. With the toys and the pre-built model, this has been much less of an issue.
Reference for structure building with Lego blocks: Woolley, A. W. (in press). Means versus Ends:Implications of Outcome and Process Focus for Team Adaptation and Performance. organization Science.
6) Lego car kits
7) Circuit-building task
8) Tower Team
9) Gazogle
10) Egg dropping. Instructions: I ran 71 groups (2-4 members/gp) and approximately 25% of the groups successfully dropped a device 1 or more times without breaking the egg. I gave the groups 2 hours to construct and drop as many devices as worked out within the 2 hours allocated for the study. Most groups dropped 2 or 3 devices. I photographed each egg drop device and I'm preparing a follow-up component to the study in which SME's (i.e. physics majors) rate the creativity of each egg drop device. I'm still trying to determine an appropriate measure to assess creativity.
11) A variation of #10 above: The "Egg Protector." Instructions: Each team is given a raw egg, a handful of drinking straws, string, masking tape and a ruler (just for measuring). You assign each of these a monetary value (e.g. straws cost $5, string is $3 an inch, etc.) and then you give them a budget that they can't exceed. I can't remember the exact amounts that I have used, or the budget, but you could try it yourself to determine the right amount. The right amount is an amount that forces them to think hard about how they will use the resources. They are told that they need to build a structure around the egg that will allow it to survive a four foot drop. The winner of the exercise is the group whose egg does not break and has the lowest cost solution. It of course can be a little messy, but students are typically very engaged and they don't know how well they have completed the work until the drop test.
12) Business strategy game where participants have to take decisions in a competitive industry. A simulation of real business decisions in a shoe industry. Performance is assessed over a period of 7-8 weeks.
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Kathleen Boies, Ph. D.
Department of Management
John Molson School of Business
Concordia University
1455 de Maisonneuve Blvd. W.
Montreal (Quebec) H3G 1M8 CANADA
Office: GM 503-41
Tel: (514) 848-2424 ext. 2902
Fax: (514) 848-4292
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