Group learning is becoming increasingly common in higher education, yet many students are disappointed by their experiences with it. This is due in part to a lack of understanding, by both students and faculty, of the attributes of effective teams along with a lack of explicit focus on their achievement. This paper presents various tools and techniques by which faculty can identify and explore ...

This paper describes the Asynchronous Teams (A-Teams) based collision avoidance algorithm in the Programmable Automated Welding System's Off-line Programming (PAWS-OLP) system. A-Teams organize different software or operators in an asynchronous way so that a variety of simple or sophisticated agents can cooperate to produce better results in a global sense. Joint limits, minimal joint motion, s...

In this study, dysfunctional cooperative learning teams are identified by comparing the Taguchi “larger-thebetter” quality index for the academic achievement of students in a cooperative learning condition with that of students in an individualistic learning condition. In performing the experiments, 42 sophomore mechanical engineering students are randomly assigned to the two learning condition...

Virtual teams (VTs) have emerged as a new form of organizational structure supported by enabling information and communication technologies (ICT) that are able to meet future service innovation challenges of the fast-changing business environment. How effective are these virtual teams in comparison to traditional face-to-face groups? Is the teamwork quality similar and is information exchanged ...

Adverse events affect approximately 3% to 12% of hospitalized patients. At least a third, but as many as half, of such events are considered preventable. Detection of these events requires investments of time and money. A report in a recent issue of Critical Care used the medical emergency team activation as a trigger to perform a prospective standardized evaluation of charts. The authors obser...

Reducing variation in the assembly of a vehicle body is a critical element in improving its quality. Assembly plants have dimensional-management teams, who monitor variation, respond to "variation crises," and continually reduce variation when there are no crises. These teams have, in the past, not kept archival records and have not shared solutions with other teams. This paper describes our pr...

BACKGROUND The CARe methodology aims to improve the quality of life of people with severe mental illness by supporting them in realizing their goals, handling their vulnerability and improving the quality of their social environment. This study aims to investigate the effectiveness of the CARe methodology for people with severe mental illness on their quality of life, personal recovery, partici...

BACKGROUND Facilitation is a key component for successful implementation in several implementation frameworks; however, there is a paucity of research specifying this component. As part of a stroke quality improvement intervention in the Veterans Health Administration (VHA), facilitation plus data feedback was compared to data feedback alone in 11 VA medical facilities. The objective of this st...

This study aims to determine how videoconferencing quality impacts the style and content of communication between members of hospice interdisciplinary teams and patients and their families. We videotaped video-calls between hospice teams and family caregivers based on the use of low-cost videophones. We assessed their audio and video quality using both a form that was filled out on site and a p...