Presentation Excellence Award

09/25/2014 12:46 PM

By Lindsay Anderson

Bradley management and leadership instructor Valerie Pape received the Presentation Excellence Award at this summer’s International Conference on Learning and Administration in Higher Education (ICLAHE) in Nashville, Tennessee. The conference promotes inclusiveness in research by offering a forum for the discussion of research in early stages as well as research that may differ from ‘traditional’ paradigms.

Pape’s presentation, “Teaching Teamwork in the Classroom: Beyond team Charters,” discussed the importance of effective teamwork skills in integrative and capstone projects within business school curricula.

“Past efforts—including a weekend teambuilding course—provided increased awareness of individual differences and team dynamics but little practice implementing skills over the life of a typical team,” noted her presentation abstract.

“A key element of the design is teaching teamwork to intact teams – those that stay together for the duration of the course,” said Pape, who led the design of a course on interpersonal effectiveness in organizations. “I wanted to share my experience designing and teaching this course to Bradley students as I had already put in a great deal of work to launch the new course!”

Her presentation included excerpts from course material including formal exercises, team quizzes, norm setting through three-way rotation, team problem solving exercises suited for a classroom, team meeting management tips, “Five Dysfunctions of a Team” presentations and peer evaluations.

Aside from winning the award, Pape cites many other conference highlights.

“The conference presented interesting research on both business disciplines and approaches to teaching business,” Pape said. “I also enjoyed learning how other faculty taught courses online. Of particular note was an IT professor that taught an online MIS course with a teamwork component. She shared how she structure assignments and the software that made that process easier.”

The next ICLAHE Conference is scheduled for May 20 through the 22 in Nashville.