LAB E: Co-Supplemental Instructor Practicum (COSI)Purpose:
The purpose of this Skills lab option is to enable students to learn and apply good leadership, communication, and team-building skills within a group environment.
Eligibility:
This Skills Lab option is offered to students who have already demonstrated good leadership, communication, and team-building behaviors toward others within the group setting. Students who wish to enhance these behaviors must have already earned an A grade on their first major class assignment in their content course.
Verification and Lab Credit:
Interested students should discuss their desire to do a COSI lab with their SI. (The SI will verify the student’s grade with the course instructor before arranging the COSI lab session.)
Completion of the COSI is equivalent to two (2) Skills labs.
Directions:
To complete this lab, the student will need to:
- Set up a time to do at least 30 minutes of one group session during the quarter
- Read the group leadership, communication, and team-building strategies
- Complete the pre-COSI planning form
- Conduct a group session
- Complete a post-COSI evaluation, have the SI sign it, and submit it for lab credit.
Read the following leadership, communication and team-building strategies:
To develop leadership skills:
- Be a role model.
- Justify your position logically and appropriately. State your goal and agendas clearly.
- Be punctual, and establish credibility through competence and integrity.
- Take minority opinion contributions into consideration.
- Be willing to be uncomfortable. Often leaders have to make decisions or provide direction that is unpopular with the group.
- Practice confidentiality with those you lead.
- Help others see the big picture.
- Delegate. Promote initiative and leadership in others.
- Make requests of those you lead to demonstrate your confidence in their abilities.
- Follow up. If you expect others to complete tasks, they will expect the same from you.
- Focus on the problems, not the people. Most people will join in to find a solution if they do not feel they are to blame for the problem.
- Share the credit. The results you achieve are dependent on the efforts of the group.
To build communication skills:
- Listen. Divide your time equally between listening and talking. Make eye contact and show interest by asking questions and commenting on what’s being said.
- Converse. A conversation is an interchange of ideas and opinions; don’t dominate, interrupt or lecture. Stay calm and use an appropriate tone when talking.
- Encourage. Help people explain their opinions or thoughts without judging what they say, but express what you think too. If you are unclear about what you heard, restate it by saying phrases like “Did you mean… ?” or “Did I hear you say…?”
- Have Fun. When appropriate, create fun learning activities or games (i.e., Jeopardy for learning terms) or Mnemonics (to remember lists).
- Be Supportive. Encourage others by showing your excitement about their ideas or theories. Being supportive means respecting others’ opinions, being receptive to new ideas, and seeking points of agreement. Tell others when you have learned from them.
- Be Assertive. Being assertive means asking for what you want. It also means not giving in to people who try to make you do something you don’t want to do. Assertive behavior is polite but strong and independent. As an assertive person, you will ask questions, seek out information, and be able to express clearly to others what you do not understand and what help you need from them. Encourage assertiveness from others as well.
To create an effective team:
- Share. Ask others for their answers, thoughts, opinions, and other information whenever possible.
- Motivate. Make sure you have clear goals. Establish an agenda. Then focus on what you accomplished before wrapping-up. Reward others with praise when they do well.
- Establish rapport. Encourage everyone to help each other. Create a friendly environment.
- Recognize and use strengths. Build on those strengths to develop the team. Invite members of the group (especially the “tactile/kinesthetic” learners) to get up and explain something by using the board, have auditory learners explain something to another member of the team, ask visual learners to draw diagrams or take notes.
- Resolve differences. For the benefit of the group, create win-win situations.
- Laugh. Laughter can break up tension and make learning easier.
- Find mutual goals. Let everyone take responsibility for achieving group goals.
- Be aware of cultural differences. Communication varies between different cultures, as does eye contact, how close you sit or stand to another, how long it takes to respond to a question.
Download the
Co-Supplemental Instructor Practicum (COSI) with worksheet (MS Word document
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