CATME TeamMaker
What is it and how does it work?
Developed by Purdue University with support from the National Science Foundation, the Comprehensive Assessment of Team Member Effectiveness (CATME) tool suite helps educators assign students to teams via the TeamMaker survey (Layton, Loughry, Ohland, & Ricco, 2010).
Educators select from a comprehensive set of criteria including availability outside of class and then have the ability to assign weights to those criteria when assigning students to teams. Educators may also add their own custom criteria to the TeamMaker survey. Additionally, surveys may be administered multiple times in a semester to configure different teams if the learning experience contains multiple team-based projects.
Which skill(s) are targeted?
The TeamMaker survey can be used to help educators form project teams and support the ability of students to engage in the following:
- Shape teams and navigate collaborations in consideration of individual differences and interpersonal dynamics
- Participate constructively in planning, leading and improving meetings
Who else has used it?
- Dietrich College General Education Program
- College of Engineering Senior Design Courses
- Tepper School of Business
Educator time commitment
The time commitment for educators to become familiar with either the TeamMaker survey or the Peer Evaluation survey varies but generally requires approximately 30-60 minutes. Student responses are available to the instructor in a formatted spreadsheet that can be downloaded from the system for instructor review.
Student time commitment
The student time commitment is approximately 10 minutes more or less, depending on the number of team-formation criteria selected for inclusion by the instructor.
Contact eberly-assist@andrew.cmu.edu for help with incorporating this resource.
Educator how-to steps
- Go to info.catme.org and request an instructor account. Use your Andrew email address so that CATME can associate your account as belonging to CMU's license. (NOTE: Set a unique CATME password, and do not use your Andrew password, as CATME is not integrated with CMU authentication). Feel free to contact eberly-assist@andrew.cmu.edu if you run into any issues with setting up your CATME instructor account.
- Optional: Review the instructor-focused CATME resources including FAQ's and videos (https://info.catme.org/instructor/) on how to incorporate CATME TeamMaker into your program/course design.
- Decide when students should complete the CATME TeamMaker survey and then include this in the corresponding assignments/instructions to students.
See these related resources…
CATME Peer Evaluation
CATME survey tool designed to collect data self- and peer-evaluation data from student teams.
ConflictU
OLI course designed to develop skills and strategies for managing conflicts that arise in teams.
MeetingU
OLI course designed to develop skills and strategies for managing, participating in productive meetings.
References
Layton, R. A., Loughry, M. L., Ohland, M. W., & Ricco, G. D. (2010). Design and validation of a web-based system for assigning members to teams using instructor-specified criteria. Advances in Engineering Education, 2(1), 1-28.