Teamwork Expectations

Comprehensive Assessment of Team Member Effectiveness (CATME) SMARTER Teamwork

Teamwork Agreement

Teams are more effective when each member knows what is expected of them and how members of the team will work together. For this reason, one of your team’s first steps in the action series is to take the time to establish a teamwork agreement. Your group’s teamwork agreement should be simple and no more than a page. It will be the first tool the team can use if the team is not functioning as expected. It will also be the first document to refer to if any team issue occurs. It should outline:

• Details the responsibilities of each member of the project.
• Focus on the process of working as a team, not the design of your products.
• Describes steps to take in the case that issues arise during the team project.
• Proves that all members understand team goals with each member’s signatures.

What is CATME?

When working on your Semester-long Design Project (SLDP), peer evaluations and self-evaluations are critical in assessing how effectively you could contribute to the team. In our course, your recitation professor will use evaluations at each Milestone and following final submission using a software called the Comprehensive Assessment of Team Member Effectiveness (CATME). The CATME SMARTER Teamwork is a platform of secure, web-based tools that enable instructors to implement best practices in managing student teams. Ever since its first debut in 2005, the system has been used by more than one million students within 2, 200 institutions worldwide [1]. All the training tools are based on the past literature and research on teamwork and training. The CATME system allows you to understand how to be a responsible individual, potential team issues, and how to contribute to teamwork effectively. The system has a comprehensive evaluation tool for you to receive peer as well as instructors’ feedback at each milestone. The evaluation tool is based on five teamwork dimensions: Contributing to the Team’s Work; Interacting with Teammates; Keeping the Team on Track; Expecting Quality; Having Relevant KSAs (Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities).

• Rater Practice: Help to train to provide accurate peer ratings and written comments. Please see sample practice.
• Peer Evaluation: Provide you with detailed feedback on how to improve your performance in a team project.

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Figure 1. CATME five team dimensions for peer evaluation [2]

How to Access CATME

Your account will be created automatically as soon as your recitation professor begins using the CATME system. An email message will be sent to you, which has step-by-step instructions on how to set your initial password. If you did not receive this email, please use the “Forgot your password?” link for the purpose of setting up a new password.

How to use CATME for EG1004?

Your recitation professor uses CATME to review the rating as well as individual comment. Your recitation professor also uses the five dimensions as well as other sets of questions to understand team dynamics, stay alert and respond to any potential team issue in a timely manner. Overall, there are three major steps for using CATME: Rater Practice, Peer Evaluation I, and Peer Evaluation II. Each of them is due at 11:59pm EST, one day before the milestone presentation.

Every student on the team is expected to participate and contribute to the project over the course of the semester. If there is/are member(s) who are not pulling their weight, they may be subject to a Teamwork Deficiency Penalty.

If the recitation professor finds any potential team issues happening at Peer Evaluation I, he or she will contact relevant team members and consider applying a temporary individual teamwork deficiency penalty if it is necessary. If the recitation professor does not see any significant improvement and the same issues still happen after Peer Evaluation II, the individual team penalty will be permanent on your gradebook. Please see the Grading Policy for more details.

Rater Practice (Milestone 1)

The CATME Rater Practice is a game-based rating simulation to let you familiarize with the CATME peer evaluation tool [1]. In this simulation, you are put in a virtual team of teammates with distinctive and representative traits from real-world scenarios. You are then asked to rate these teammates based on five dimensions. At the end of the Rater Practice, you are given immediate feedback and how to improve your ratings. You are also trained on how to write effective feedback during recitation.

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Figure 2. CATME Rate Practice interface [3]

Peer Evaluation I (Milestone 2)

Your recitation professor uses peer evaluations and self-evaluations to assess how effectively each team member contributes to the team. The Comprehensive Assessment of Team Member Effectiveness (CATME) was developed for this purpose. The peer evaluations are submitted by you one day before the Milestone presentation. The score range for peer rating is between 1 and 5. In addition, you are expected to leave peer comments. After you submit the peer evaluation (rating and written comments), your recitation professor will review them and notify you of any potential issue within a week of submission.

• Contributing to the Team’s Work
• Interacting with Teammates
• Keeping the Team on Track
• Expecting Quality
• Having Relevant KSAs (Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities)

Peer Evaluation II (Milestone 3)

You will receive the same set of questions as Peer Evaluation I. Your recitation professor will evaluate your team performance and decide Individual penalties should be applied if there is no improvement on team performance by Milestone 3.

References

[1] Purdue University, "About CATME" [Online], Available: https://info.catme.org/

[2] Purdue University, "Peer Evaluation: The Original Comprehensive Assessment" [Online], Available: https://info.catme.org/features/peer-evaluation/

[3] Purdue University, "Rater Practice: Providing Feedback for Evaluations" [Online], Available: https://info.catme.org/features/rater-practice/