Boundless.com provides free textbooks (as well as textbooks for sale) along with quizzes and PowerPoint templates to go with those texts. Chapter 6 of the free Boundless Management text is about Groups, Teams, and Teamwork. This chapter includes sections about the following:

• Defining teams and teamwork
• Types of teams
• Building successful teams
• Factors influencing team performance
• Managing conflict

To use these materials, instructors must first create a free Educator account. Once instructors create a course, they are provided with a link to give to their students. Students follow the link to enroll in the course so they can see the assignments, access the quizzes, and enable the instructor to view their grades.

Instructors can assign the entire chapter, a specific section of the chapter, or a sub-section of the chapter. Each chapter comes with quizzes that can be assigned and automatically graded. Instructors can even edit the quizzes before assigning them. Each chapter also comes with a PowerPoint template that can be downloaded, edited, and used to lecture over the material.

Getting the Material

First, go to http://www.boundless.com and click Sign Up. Sign up for a free Educator account.

To view the materials about teams, use the Subjects drop-down menu at the top of the page and select Management. Then click on 6 Groups, Teams, and Teamwork. From this page you can view all the sections and subsections of the chapter, access the quizzes, and download the PowerPoint template.

To assign material to your students, click the Assign Reading button (depending on what you want to assign, the button might say Assign Chapter Reading or Assign Concept Reading). You will be asked to indicate which class the assignment is for. If you haven’t yet created a class, select New Class from the drop-down menu. Select the date the reading is due and then click Assign. If you have created a new class, you will be given a URL to share with your students so they can create their own student accounts and complete the assignment.

Strengths

The chapter provides an overview of teamwork from a business perspective. This perspective may help students see the relevance of Collaborate Leadership to their future work; teamwork isn’t something that happens only in college.

People with Educator accounts on Boundless can suggest contributions and editing changes to the material. All quizzes can be edited to fit the needs of a particular class.

Concerns

Boundless does not integrate with Scholar. Although you can include links in Scholar to send students to specific reading assignments or specific quizzes, the only way to move grades from Boundless to Scholar is to enter them by hand.

Recommendations for Use

Instructors could use the material in this chapter to improve their own knowledge and lecture about these aspects of collaborate leadership.

Instructors could assign students to read the chapter and complete a quiz prior to an in-class discussion of teamwork. Introducing students to some of the vocabulary associated with teamwork could be helpful. For example, groups go through four stages: forming, storming, norming, and performing.