Compared to more complex personality assessments, Wired That Way by Marita Littauer, presents four personality types that students find easy to understand and internalize: Popular Sanguine, Powerful Choleric, Perfect Melancholy, and Peaceful Phlegmatic. Students' awareness of their own and their peers' classification in this comprehensive…

Courses: Small Group Communication, Online Groups and Communities. Objectives: The objectives of this activity are to expose students to common-bond and common-identity group dynamics, including the differences between memberships, as well as member motivations, goals, and outcomes.

In a small-group communication course, students participate in a semester-long project to observe an organization while applying many group communication principles, including conflict resolution, group dynamics, teambuilding, leadership, and diversity. In groups of five, the students select any organization, agency, or department on campus or in…

Author Wiley Blevins is renowned for changing the way educators think about teaching children to read, helping thousands of teachers implement effective phonics instruction. Now, Blevins gets us to think in powerful new ways about differentiating whole-class phonics lessons, so students at every skill level can engage. With Blevins' trademark…

This "Equity Tool" is intended to facilitate use of the concepts and processes described in greater depth in the Equity by Design brief, "Promoting Socially Just Evidence-based Practice." We summarize the framework presented in this brief and offer guiding questions to support educators' preparation for and engagement in…

Even when using mixed-ability grouping--grouping students so that students with a range of mathematical thinking work together--there is potential to position some students as more capable than others. In this article, the authors describe two approaches to mixed-ability grouping, providing examples of how teachers using those approaches describe…

Information sharing is a critical aspect of effective team functioning. However, it can be challenging to discern whether the information communicated is fact, opinion, or someone's best guess (FOG) due to the varied understandings, assumptions, and interests team members bring to any collaboration. In this article, we introduce a role-play…

Collective efficacy has become a prominent feature in educational policy and practice with growing evidence that a strong sense of collective efficacy amongst educators leads to better outcomes for students. With growing interest in the importance of collective efficacy and how to cultivate it, the Collective Efficacy Tracking Tool was created to…

Course: Small Group Communication. Objectives: Students will identify their personality traits; synthesize the relationship between personality, small-group interdependence, and grouphate; and apply collaborative skills and knowledge of individual personality differences in building small-group success.

Understanding the dynamic relationships of the entities that have the most impact on an organization - or that the organization impacts the most - is at the core of stakeholder management approaches. In this article, we present an experiential exercise that provides a creative practical, low-overhead, discussion-oriented classroom activity to…

This teaching case explores the racialized administrative burdens placed on Latinx staff and students as a Latinx campus cultural center becomes institutionalized or more structurally embedded within a Predominantly White Institution. This case leverages the perspective of the center's Assistant Director to demonstrate how Latinx staff navigated…

Over the past several months, public schools across the United States have experienced a surge of migrant students. This sudden influx of these students has caught many schools and teachers off-guard as they struggle to find and pull together available resources to meet the newcomers' needs. Although the U.S. has a long history of receiving…

Courses: Persuasion, Group Communication, Communication Theory, Computer-Mediated Communication. Objectives: In this activity, students discuss and analyze film clips in order to understand theories, processes, and applications related to the concept of deindividuation.

This book is a first person narrative from a parent/community advocate. Examining my personal experiences as a parent of color in a Higher Learning Institute, I highlight some of the frustrations experienced by urban working class parents of color as they attempt to engage teachers in their community's schools. I underscore the importance of one…

This article outlines a unique student activity designed to close the gap between students' perceived and actual communication and team behavior during virtual group meetings. The Communication Audit exercise requires that students record an online small group meeting and then review the recording while categorizing each verbal remark into…