Teamwork Tasks Research Articles

Mental Health Training Needs Analysis in Thailand, Indonesia, and Cambodia: Challenges and Opportunities

Objective: Even though the number of health professionals is growing in many counties in Southeast Asia, the shortage of mental health professionals remains a challenge. The current model of professional training needs to be changed to foster cooperative and collaborative skills, through interprofessional and transprofessional education, so professionals as well as non-professional service providers and operational personnel are trained to be members of the health teams. However, training needs in each Southeast Asian country remains unknown. The present study surveyed these needs using Hennessy-Hick’s criteria and experts’ opinions. Materials and Methods: Fifteen representatives from Thailand, Cambodia, and Indonesia, mostly psychiatrists, nurses, and psychologists, attended the meeting and presented for 30 to 50 minutes on the condition of mental health services and training needs in their countries. All representatives were asked to complete an online-shared report of the adapted Hennessy-Hicks Training Analysis Questionnaires. Results: According to the Hennessy-Hick’s criteria, some teamwork tasks were required for Thailand, whereas most tasks were required for Indonesia and Cambodia. Training on special topics depended on the country’s necessity. Basic skills are needed in all ranges of mental health issues. Thailand and Indonesia expressed quite similar needs, while Thailand had identified itself as having ‘an aging society’, which ‘caring for patients with dementia and caregivers’ in their training needs were more urgent than Indonesia. Training non-psychiatric professionals, such as primary physicians and nurses, concerning mental health issues, might help to address current mental health needs in Thailand, while Cambodia was concerned about recruiting mental health professionals and focusing on providing sufficient services for the country rather than training non-professionals to deal with mental health issues. Conclusion: The training needs for mental health professionals centered on research, clinical tasks, and communication, while including nonprofessional mental health providers in training of basic skills such as communication and up-to-date technology are deemed important at the present. Keywords: Training Needs Analysis; Thailand; Cambodia; Indonesia; Mental Health

Teaching Methodologies in Spatial Planning for Integration of International Students

Nowadays, the spread of international exchanges is growing among university students, across European countries. In general, during their academic degrees, the high education students are looking for international experiences abroad. This goal has its justification not only in the reason of pursuing their studies, but also in the desire of knowing another city, a different culture, a diverse way of teaching, and at the same time having the opportunity of improving their skills speaking another language. Therefore, the scholars at the high level of educational systems have to rethink their traditional approaches in terms of teaching methodologies in order to be able to integrate these students, that every academic year are coming from abroad. Portugal is not an exception on this matter, neither the scientific domain of spatial planning. Actually, during the last years, the number of foreign students choosing to study in this country is rapidly increasing. Even though some years ago, most of the international students were originated from Portuguese speaking countries, comprising its former colonies such as Brazil, Angola, Cape Verde or Mozambique, recently the number of students from other countries is increasing, including from Syria. Characterized by a mild climate, a beautiful seashore and cities packed with historical and cultural interests, this country is a very attractive destination for international students. In this sense, this study explores the beliefs about teaching methodologies that scholars in spatial planning domain can use to guide their practice within Architecture degree, in order to promote de integration of international students. These methodologies are based on the notion that effective teaching is student-centred rather than teacher-centred, in order to achieve a knowledge-centred learning environment framework in terms of spatial planning skills. Thus, this article arises out of a spatial planning unit experience in the Master Degree in Architecture (MIA) course, at the University of Beira Interior (UBI) in Portugal, to understand more about teaching methodologies, in order to promote the integration of international students. The study explores the teamwork tasks and the hetero-evaluation as new approaches in the teaching methodologies focused on the student-centred teaching. This research main conclusion is the need of promoting a shift from lecture-based and teacher-centred practices to student-centred approach.

Forming Linguistic Competence of Foreign Students at the Preparatory Department of a Technical University

The article describes the technique developed by the authors to organize classroom lessons and independent work for foreign learners studying in Russian at the Preparatory department of a technical university. At the classroom lessons in Mathematics students worked with five types of tasks: sample tasks; text analysis; micro essay; model task; mastering mathematical symbols. During the independent work in the study of Mathematics, foreign students performed tests and teamwork tasks placed on the platform Moodle. We have carried out the experiments, which showed that the technique of organizing classroom lessons and independent work, developed by the authors, had a positive impact on the level of linguistic competence in Mathematics of foreign students of the Preparatory department.

STUDENTŲ KOMANDINIS DARBAS KAIP KŪRYBINGUMO VERSLE (ENTREPRENEURSHIP) UGDYMO PRIEMONĖ

Straipsnyje nagrinėjama antreprenerystės, kaip asmeninio ir kolektyvinio kūrybingumo, būtino šiuolaikiniam verslo kūrėjui, lavinimo universitetinėse studijose problematika. Pagrindinė verslininko antreprenerio orientacija – verslo naujovių paieška – neišvengiamai skatinama kūrybingumo, todėl universitetams, siekiantiems ugdyti aukščiausios kvalifikacijos absolventus, iškyla būtinybė lavinti studentų kūrybingumą ir antrepreneriškumą. Maža to, antreprenerystė susijusi ne tik su individualiu, bet ir (gal net labiau) kolektyviniu kūrybingumu, kuris suvokiamas kaip gebėjimas kurti sistemų inovacijas. Kadangi studentų kolektyvinio kūrybingumo ugdymas pasižymi tam tikra specifika, reikia pasitelkti tinkamus jo lavinimo metodus. Vienas iš tokių metodų – kolektyvinio kūrybingumo ugdymo modelis – pristatomas šiame straipsnyje. Jame taip pat analizuojami studentų komandinio darbo užduoties aiškumo, reikšmingai lemiančio komandinio darbo rezultatus, veiksniai. Nustačius turimų žinių apie užduotį įtaką jos supratimui (užduoties aiškumui), pristatomas kūrybinis žinių paieškos modulis, kurio pagrindinė funkcija – mokyti studentų komandas sistemingai ieškoti reikalingų žinių komandinėms užduotims įgyvendinti.

The Development of an Agent-Based Modeling Framework for Simulating Engineering Team Work

Team working is becoming increasingly important in modern organizations due to its beneficial outcomes. A team's performance levels are determined by complex interactions between the attributes of its individual members, the communication and dynamics between members, the working environment, and the team's work tasks. As organizations evolve, so too does the nature of team working. During the past two decades, product development in engineering organizations has increasingly been undertaken by multidisciplinary integrated product teams. Such increasing complexity means that the nature of research methods for studying teams must also evolve. Accordingly, this paper proposes an agent-based modeling approach for simulating team working within an engineering environment, informed by research conducted in two engineering organizations. The model includes a number of variables at an individual level (competency, motivation, availability, response rate), team level (communication, shared mental models, trust), and task level (difficulty, workflow), which jointly determine team performance (quality, time to complete the task, time spent working on the task). In addition to describing the model's development, the paper also reports the results of various simulation runs that were conducted in response to realistic team working scenarios, together with its validation. Finally, the paper discusses the model's practical applications as a tool for facilitating organizational decision making with respect to optimizing team working.

Preventing human errors in aviation maintenance using an on-line maintenance assistance platform

In an effort to increase aviation maintenance and inspection safety, this study develops an on-line maintenance assistance platform (on-line MAP) for technicians to perform maintenance tasks. In this platform, the risk of human error was defined in each task procedure to prevent human errors and improve satisfaction with the job. The on-line MAP reminds technicians to consider the effect of human error on systems and humans, human error relative to seriousness rank and frequency, and graphic information aids in each removal and installation procedure. To verify the proposed platform, experiments were conducted on a JT8D engine during the inaugural flight of Boeing's 727 to compare the current workcard instruction and the proposed on-line MAP in two high-complexity teamwork tasks and one low-complexity individual task. In addition, a subjective questionnaire survey (addressing maintenance behavior, issues related to the current workcard, performance shaping factor (PSF) investigation, and mental workload), an objective performance measure (expert evaluation and situation awareness), and time performance were collected from 42 participants and analyzed to quantify the human errors into the human error impact risk index (IRI). The results revealed that teams' risk cognition, situation awareness, technicians' performance and their job satisfaction have all been increased by the proposed on-line MAP instruction comparing to that by the current workcard instruction. Relevance to industry Several computer-training programs in the maintenance industry have been developed. However, risk cognition during the maintenance tasks has received little attention. This study developed an on-line maintenance assistance platform for preventing human error in the aviation maintenance industry.

Assessing teamwork in medical education and practice: Relating behavioural teamwork ratings and clinical performance

Background: Problems with communication and team coordination are frequently linked to adverse events in medicine. However, there is little experimental evidence to support a relationship between observer ratings of teamwork skills and objective measures of clinical performance.Aim: Our main objective was to test the hypothesis that observer ratings of team skill will correlate with objective measures of clinical performance.Methods: Nine teams of medical students were videotaped performing two types of teamwork tasks: (1) low fidelity classroom-based patient assessment and (2) high fidelity simulated emergent care. Observers used a behaviourally anchored rating scale to rate each individual on skills representative of assertiveness, decision-making, situation assessment, leadership, and communication. A checklist-based measure was used to assess clinical team performance.Results: Moderate to high inter-observer correlations and moderate correlations between cases established the validity of a behaviourally anchored team skill rating tool for simulated emergent care. There was moderate to high correlation between observer ratings of team skill and checklist-based measures of team performance for the simulated emergent care cases (r = 0.65, p = 0.06 and r = 0.97, p < 0.0001).Conclusions: These results provide prospective evidence of a positive relationship between observer ratings of team skills and clinical team performance in a simulated dynamic health care task.

Deterministic and stochastic scheduling with teamwork tasks

AbstractWe study a class of new scheduling problems which involve types of teamwork tasks. Each teamwork task consists of several components, and requires a team of processors to complete, with each team member to process a particular component of the task. Once the processor completes its work on the task, it will be available immediately to work on the next task regardless of whether the other components of the last task have been completed or not. Thus, the processors in a team neither have to start, nor have to finish, at the same time as they process a task. A task is completed only when all of its components have been processed. The problem is to find an optimal schedule to process all tasks, under a given objective measure. We consider both deterministic and stochastic models. For the deterministic model, we find that the optimal schedule exhibits the pattern that all processors must adopt the same sequence to process the tasks, even under a general objective function GC = F(f1(C1), f2(C2), … , fn(Cn)), where fi(Ci) is a general, nondecreasing function of the completion time Ci of task i. We show that the optimal sequence to minimize the maximum cost MC = max fi(Ci) can be derived by a simple rule if there exists an order f1(t) ≤ … ≤ fn(t) for all t between the functions {fi(t)}. We further show that the optimal sequence to minimize the total cost TC = ∑ fi(Ci) can be constructed by a dynamic programming algorithm. For the stochastic model, we study three optimization criteria: (A) almost sure minimization; (B) stochastic ordering; and (C) expected cost minimization. For criterion (A), we show that the results for the corresponding deterministic model can be easily generalized. However, stochastic problems with criteria (B) and (C) become quite difficult. Conditions under which the optimal solutions can be found for these two criteria are derived. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2004

SPARK, a confidential web–based template for self and peer assessment of student teamwork: benefits of evaluating across different subjects

Students often enjoy learning in teams and developing teamwork skills, but criticise team assessment as unfair if there is equal reward for unequal contributions. This paper describes the design, implementation and evaluation in four subjects of the Self and Peer Assessment Resource Kit (SPARK), a web–based template which aims to improve learning from team assessment tasks and make the assessment fairer for students. Students benefit because the web–based template improves confidentiality and the potential for accurate assessment of relative contributions. Academics benefit through the potential for improving student learning from teamwork tasks, and saving time by automating the process of calculating self and peer adjustments of assessment grades, especially attractive for large enrolments. Benefits accrue to the institution and wider academic community because the template suits a range of group assessment situations. Based on experiences gained over five years of developing, evaluating and implementing SPARK, this paper aims to illustrate the potential benefits of the template to potential users and more critically, to use what was learned from implementing the template across a range of subjects to alert others to key issues for evaluating and disseminating educational technology innovations.