Team Contracts Research Articles

Teaching and assessing undergraduate collaboration skills scaffolded through the biochemistry curriculum using collaboration rubrics and student learning contracts.

The Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at St. Mary's College of Maryland has scaffolded collaboration skills throughout the Biochemistry curriculum and developed several assessment tools to evaluate these skills. Biochemistry I and II have used team contracts at the beginning of extensive team projects where students identify their strengths, review expectations, and plan for group communication. At the conclusion of each project, each student assesses their own contributions and team members for various parts of the project. A common collaboration rubric was also applied in Biochemistry I and II as well as in two other courses, General Chemistry II Lab and Physical Chemistry I Lab, for students to evaluate themself and team members using the following subcategories: quality of work, commitment, leadership, communication, and analysis. In Biochemistry I and II, we used this rubric for multiple assignments that are part of the projects in the lecture courses. In the General Chemistry II Lab, we provided elements of this rubric within an evaluation form that reflects these collaboration attributes after each lab experience, so students can assess and report privately on their experiences as part of their collaboration grade for the course. A similar collaboration rubric is completed by students for each team-based laboratory within Physical Chemistry I. We also demonstrate different ways that instructors can use the data from these assessment tools. In our department, we are using these tools to frame the importance of collaboration skills and collecting data to inform our teaching of these skills. Preliminary data suggest that our curriculum is successfully teaching students how to be good collaborators.

Team-based incentives in transportation firms: An experiment

Providing the right incentives to bus drivers has become an issue in many cities worldwide. Liberalization experiences and research have shown that high-powered incentives lead to safety hazards, lack of service in low-demand areas, and poor service quality. Fixed-wage schemes, common in tendered systems, are among the leading causes of increased fare evasion, as drivers do not control payment adequately. In a controlled experimental setting, we show that team-based incentives induce levels of effort similar to those provided by an individual pay-for-performance scheme but without undesirable operational decisions. We find that team contracts eliminate the conflict of interest between drivers, causing drivers to control the passengers’ payment while maintaining more regular speeds. Consequently, reducing safety hazards and rushing through low-demand stops, avoiding excessive waiting times, and keeping a uniform distribution in the passenger load. These characteristics are absent in the individual contract and are a crucial part of the quality of service.

Developing future translational scientists through authentic learning and assessments

The Interprofessional Research Design course uses authentic learning pedagogy to bring together students from different education tracks (PhD, MD, MD/PhD training) to engage in interprofessional collaborative skills toward completion of a capstone project, a National Health Institutes (NIH) R21-style grant proposal. The course, underpinned by principles of team science, begins with a leadership training workshop to introduce students to effective leadership and teamwork strategies for interprofessional team environments. We used several assessments during the course to monitor leadership and team dynamics. We analyzed three assessments (leadership self-efficacy testing, iterative team contracts and reflective essays) to better understand students’ learning experiences. Self-efficacy testing was administered before leadership training (pre) and at the end of the course (post-then); scores were analyzed using a repeated repeated measures ANOVA. Iterative team contracts were analyzed qualitatively using both deductive and descriptive methods. Reflective essays were analyzed using a general inductive approach. Nine teams of 32 students (23 MD; 9 PhD) participated in the class over 2017-2018. Self-efficacy testing using post-then timing to control for response shift showed a statistically significant increase in self-efficacy across all measures. Deductive qualitative analysis of iterative contracting showed evidence of team processes which support successful team performance; and descriptive analysis mapped productive behaviors. In reflective essays, seven of the nine teams collectively described their experiences positively; e.g., themes included empathizing with group members, sophisticated communication and collaborative workflow/styles. For negative experiences, themes were related to basic communication, poor integration and the theory-practice gap of leadership training. These findings demonstrate the usefulness of an authentic learning pedagogy focused on teaching the practice of team science.

4160 Evaluating Student Team Dynamics

OBJECTIVES/GOALS: We aimed to explore the students’ assessments of workload distribution by comparing personal reflective commentaries and team documents defining division of labor in a team science setting. METHODS/STUDY POPULATION: The Interprofessional Research Design course models the team science experience by bringing together MD and PhD students to write a research grant. Four teams of 13 students were tasked with both individual and team-based assignments: 1) Each week, each student reported their perception of their own and their team members’ effort over the week (totalling 100%). 2) Iterative work contracts for each team were submitted at four time-points; assigned work toward project completion totalled 100%. 3) Lastly, each student submitted a short commentary reflecting on the prior week’s team dynamics and teamwork. We retrospectively performed a mixed-methods analysis of the workload data. RESULTS/ANTICIPATED RESULTS: Group-reporting in the team contracts remained static throughout the course, often stating equal distribution of workload, whereas individual reporting was more dynamic. Of 13 students, 8 rated more than 50% of the weeks as balanced. Among some students, there was a discordance of workload distribution when comparing the group document to the individual perceptions of work performed by their teammates. Reflective writing mapped more closely to individual quantitative reports. The data also revealed within team variations, where one student may report a higher proportion of their contributions, while the rest of the team attributed that student a lower percentage of the total work. DISCUSSION/SIGNIFICANCE OF IMPACT: An important aspect of team function is workload distribution. Group-based workload discussions may be a useful framework, but does not provide insight into team dynamics, whereas individually reported workload distributions and short reflections seem to more accurately inform us on team function.

Practical Method of Improving the Teamwork of Engineering Students Using Team Contracts to Minimize Conflict Situations

Educational models are incorporating methodologies to train students in teamwork skills in response to companies’ information technology (IT) requirements. Conflict management is the key to effective teamwork. This paper proposes a method to improve students’ organization, teamwork, and conflict management skills. This method consists of brief training on leadership and management styles, with minimal extra work, followed by the signing of team contracts that outline group rules, and promoting the assumption of responsibilities. The experimental results showed that this method reduced conflict rates, improved group communication and indirectly improved satisfaction, and responsibility and motivation in work groups. Consequently, students’ overall academic performance improved, both as a group and as individuals.

A training program designed to improve interprofessional knowledge, skills and attitudes in chronic disease settings

For over 25 years, The Arthritis Program (TAP) at Southlake Regional Health Centre has worked within a successful interprofessional model. TAP recognized the need to teach its model and developed The Arthritis Program – Interprofessional Training Program (TAP-ITP). This pilot study evaluated perceptions of 22 TAP-ITP participants related to effectiveness and satisfaction. The study employed a longitudinal survey design and data were collected at the baseline (T1), post-program (T2), and at one year (T3) by use of the following instruments: W(e)Learn Program Assessment; Interprofessional (IP) Learner and Team Contracts; Interprofessional Collaborative Competencies Attainment Survey (ICCAS); Bruyère Clinical Team Self Assessment Scale; and Attitudes Toward Health Care Teams (ATHCT). Data analysis included descriptive, non-parametric and parametric tests. Results indicated participants were very satisfied with TAP-ITP. ICCAS scores revealed statistically significant differences (Wilcoxon rank sum tests) from T1 to T2 in perceptions of IPC competencies (p < 0.05). Paired t-tests for each T1 to post (T2 and T3) scores were all significant (p < 0.05) for each Bruyère subscale and overall scores. For ATHCT, paired t-tests for each T1 to T2 were significant for Quality of Care/Process (p = 0.04) and borderline significant for Physician Centrality scale (p = 0.06). At T3, improvement in both scales was maintained. This pilot study suggests that TAP-ITP improves self-assessed scores of knowledge and skills, as well as attitudes in interprofessional care post-program and sustained at one year.

The Optimality of Team Contracts

This paper analyzes optimal contracts in a linear hidden-action model with normally distributed returns possessing two moments that are governed jointly by two agents who have negative exponential utilities. They can observe and verify each others’ effort levels and draft enforceable side-contracts on effort levels and realized returns. Standard constraints, resulting in incentive contracts, fail to ensure implementability, and we examine centralized collusion-proof contracts and decentralized team contracts, as well. We prove that the principal may restrict attention to team contracts whenever returns from the project satisfy a mild monotonicity condition.

Relative performance or team evaluation? Optimal contracts for other-regarding agents

This paper derives optimal incentive contracts for agents with other-regarding preferences. It offers a behavioral explanation for the empirically observed lack of relative performance evaluation. We analyze a principal-multi agent model and assume that agents are inequity averse or status seeking. We show that team contracts can be optimal even if the agents’ performance measures are positively correlated such that relative performance evaluation would be optimal with purely self-interested agents and even though relative performance evaluation provides additional incentives to provide effort if agents have other-regarding preferences. Furthermore, optimal incentive contracts for other-regarding agents can be low-powered as compared to contracts for purely self-interested agents.

Relative Performance or Team Evaluation? Optimal Contracts for Other-Regarding Agents

This paper derives optimal incentive contracts for agents with other-regarding preferences. It offers a behavioral explanation for the empirically observed lack of relative performance evaluation. We analyze a principal-multi agent model and assume that agents are inequity averse or status seeking. We show that team contracts can be optimal even if the agents' performance measures are positively correlated such that relative performance evaluation would be optimal with purely self-interested agents and even though relative performance evaluation provides additional incentives to provide effort if agents have other-regarding preferences. Furthermore, optimal incentive contracts for other-regarding agents can be low-powered as compared to contracts for purely self-interested agents.

A Model for Team Managers in the Presence of Self-Serving Workers

We develop a model of team formation in which workers learn about their level of ability. We show that insufficient cooperation may arise as workers learn positively about their own skills. We then build a model for team managers and establish that their objectivity in assessing coworkers' abilities may facilitate cooperation among agents. This is the case because managers are able to design team contracts based on workers' true performances. Our work provides a motive for the existence of team managers in theabsence of asymmetry of information.

Optimal Multi-Agent Performance Measures for Team Contracts

We present a continuous-time contracting model under moral hazard with many agents. The principal contracts many agents as a team, and they jointly produce correlated outcomes. We show the optimal contract for each agent is linear in outcomes of all other agents as well as his/her own. The structure of the optimal contract strikingly reveals that the optimal aggregate performance measure in general can be orthogonally decomposed into two statistics: one is a sufficient statistic, and the other a nonsufficient statistic. As a consequence, the optimal aggregate performance measure in general is not a sufficient statistic, unless the principal is risk neutral. We further discuss agents' optimal effort choices using a quadratic-cost example, which also strikingly suggests that team contracts sometimes provide lower-powered effort incentives than individually separate contracts do.

Envelope-Based HIV Vaccines

HIV researchers everywhere are grateful to Science for featuring HIV in their 28 June issue to coincide with this year's AIDS Congress in Barcelona. However, there are two points in Jon Cohen's article “Monkey puzzles” (News Focus, p. [2325][1]) that require further consideration. First, the statement that “monkey studies with AIDS vaccines have completely failed to elicit antibodies that can neutralize the virus” (p. [2325][1]) is not consistent with the published data. Many papers have shown the ability of envelope-based HIV vaccines to induce antibodies that neutralize T cell line-adapted virus isolates, although neutralization of primary CCR5-dependent HIV-1 isolates was rarely observed. In contrast, our papers clearly show that immunization of Rhesus macaques with a plasmid DNA vaccine prime followed by a recombinant oligomeric V2 loop-deleted SF162 envelope protein boost is capable of inducing serum antibodies that neutralize multiple primary isolates of HIV-1 that are both antigenically distinct and CCR5-dependent ([1][2], [2][3]). To our knowledge, this was the first time that a vaccine-induced immune response was shown to be capable of broad primary isolate neutralization, and we are dismayed that this significant milestone in HIV vaccine research is overlooked by a review in a widely read journal. Second, the table on p. [2326][1] (“AIDS Vaccine Pipeline”) does not include vaccines in preclinical testing sponsored by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) in collaboration with Wyeth Laboratories and Chiron Corporation (a version of the DNA prime-protein boost vaccine mentioned above). These IND-enabling preclinical studies are supported by the NIH HIV Vaccine Design and Development Team Contracts, which have been well publicized. We believe that underreporting the breadth and scope of NIAID's commitment to research and development of HIV vaccines does this important agency a great disservice. 1. [↵][4]1. S. Cherpelis 2. et al. , J. Virol. 75, 1547 (2001). [OpenUrl][5][Abstract/FREE Full Text][6] 2. [↵][7]1. S. W. Barnett 2. et al. , J. Virol. 75, 5526 (2001). [OpenUrl][8][Abstract/FREE Full Text][9] # Response {#article-title-2} The pipeline table should have made clear that the list was not all-inclusive. The Chiron and Wyeth studies appear on a more comprehensive pipeline table that accompanied an article that I wrote for the 2 March 2001 issue (“AIDS vaccines show promise after years of frustration,” News Focus, p. [1686][10]). That article includes a prediction from Chiron that its vaccine would be in human trials in 2002 (which does not look likely now), and it describes the work in some detail. The assertion that antibodies have “completely failed” to neutralize the virus in monkey studies may be a bit of an overstatement, but not much, as is clear simply by looking closely at the counterevidence Donnelly et al. present. First, they cite in vitro studies of antibodies from human HIV vaccine tests—which, if anything, underscore the difficulties antibodies have in stopping real-world isolates of the virus. Their own monkey data, from two animals, did not reach statistical significance, and, as far as I can tell, have not been independently replicated. 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