Information technology

Using team roles

Learners should take on two kinds of responsibilities during co-operative learning: tasks and team roles.

Tasks

Learners must do their fair share of the work involved in producing whatever is required. So if it is a research task and there are three in the team, each team member should do a third of the research.

Team roles

In addition to completing tasks, team members should take on roles that support teamwork. A team role may enable the team to function more smoothly, for instance 'discussion leader'. Or it may involve helping others, such as 'peer instructor'. These two layers of responsibility greatly enrich the learning and emphasise the importance of the individual's responsibilities to the team.

In this resource you will find cards for 21 different team roles.

"I like the sense of responsibility that the role card gives me." Learner at East Riding College

Try these ways of using the role cards

Select the roles that you think will work best for a particular activity and allocate roles to specific learners yourself.
Select the roles, but allow the teams to allocate them.
Select all the roles that might be relevant during a specific activity and allow the teams to select the ones they want to use.
Give teams all 21 role cards and allow them to select the ones they want to use.
Allow teams to combine roles that they think will work well together, so that each team member has several team roles.
Select the role cards you want the teams to use, but ask teams to write down, perhaps on the back of each role card, the skills they think the role demands. Then ask them to decide who has the relevant skills and allocate roles accordingly.
As above, but this time the teams allocate roles on the basis on who feels they need to develop the skills associated with a particular role.

You might use the role cards in a slightly different way each time, to create variety and demonstrate the benefits of experimentation.

However you use the role cards, your aim should be to encourage learners to try out as many different roles as possible over a period of time. Discourage learners from stereotyping or making assumptions about their own or others' abilities. They may well surprise themselves and others. A downloadable version of the role cards is supplied which allows you to print them as small cards which can also be used to make badges.

When a learner at Lakes College West Cumbria was asked what they had learnt during a co-operative learning activity, they replied: "I've learnt that I could be a team leader."