Describes team-building activities for mental health counselors who function as consultants to staffs, groups, or other intact work systems. Provides rationale for application of strategic systems and sociodrama techniques to an adventure activity that allows a group to metaphorically enact its common issue. Provides example of a consultation…

Examples are given of how spontaneous discussions of school and home problems enabled fourth grade children to seek solutions to difficulties in an open and cooperative way. (JD)

Explores the effects of Group Decision Support Systems (GDSS) on small group communication and decision-making processes. Finds that comparing GDSS, manual, and baseline conditions enables separation of effects resulting from procedural structures from those resulting from computerization. Results support some aspects of the research model and…

A company designs and delivers treasure and scavenger hunts for corporate and institutional clients. Groups are divided into teams that must solve puzzles for directions or clues. The hunts build creativity, teamwork, communication skills, and an appreciation of others' strengths. An insert includes a four-puzzle mini-treasure hunt. (TD)

Discussion of computer-mediated group problem solving focuses on a study of undergraduates that compared the perceptions of participants, the nature of the comments made, and the patterns of communication in face-to-face and computer conferencing groups in terms of problem-solving activities while solving well-structured and ill-structured…

Investigates the factors that influence the effectiveness of collaboration on open-ended mathematical tasks. Identifies various phenomena that influence cognitive "lifting", "hovering", and "falling"; that is, improvement, no change, and reduction in levels of functioning, respectively. (Author/MM)

In this study we examined response patterns in exchanges between males and females and their effects on gender participation in five online debates. Students classified messages into arguments, evidence, critiques, and elaborations while posting messages to the debates to facilitate argumentation and the sequential analysis of message-response…

The reauthorized Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEIA) encourages the use of problem-solving prereferral approaches and permits local education agencies to use 15% of federal funds for early intervention services for students who have not been identified as needing special education but who need additional academic and…

The major objective of the present study was to investigate the effect of group size on total fluency, flexibility, and originality of response to problem solving tasks and its effect on average per person fluency, flexibility, and originality. (Author/RK)

The purposes of this study were: (1) to test several social decision schemes to obtain plausible explanations of different group processes in solving different disjunctive tasks; and (2) to study both dyads and tetrads solving a eureka and a non-eureka disjunctive task. Social decision schemes theory assumes that a group decision is a joint…

This study examines the impact of one important task characteristic for the process by which groups solve problems. The principal comparison is between a generative problem and a choice task, and whether or not the differences between these types of tasks affect the group's methods for arriving at a decision. Two types of analysis are conducted of…

This paper describes two attempts to utilize a conflict resolution approach in academic settings. The approach includes: (1) the significance of the structure of communication between parties in conflict; (2) the understanding of face-to-face interaction processes; (3) problems of perceptual distortion; and (4) political socializations. The…

An attempt was made to ascertain what type of verbal interaction behavior manifested by a group given a problem in curriculum development affects the quality of the product. Thirty ad hoc groups, selected randomly, were given curriculum development tasks to solve. Curriculum Guide Form (CGF) and Bales' Interaction Process Analysis (IPA) were used…

One hundred eighty 4-man groups (90 of men and 90 of women) using 3 types of net (All-Channel, Wheel and Circle) under 3 conditions (Planning Period (PP), Rest Period (RP) and Control) were run in a single session with 5 complex problems to determine whether a single 2-minute planning period after solution of the first problem would result in…