December 9th, 2008 by Robin Green

In both schools and workplaces, LMSs can aid in the cultivation of teamwork skills. Through an LMS, team members can perform collaborate projects, assigning roles within the team. Team members can brainstorm, plan, do project summaries, maintain logs, and provide a final report using an LMS.

Ultimately, however, good teamwork is something that needs to be practiced in a real-world environment. Online collaboration shouldn’t do the job alone. Empowering people is more about attitude and behavior towards staff and students than processes and tools. Teamwork is strengthened by respecting, encouraging, stimulating and caring for people–not dictating to them. Creating an atmosphere of mutual respect is essential in building a successful team.

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Coggno.com offers world-class LMS platforms.

December 9th, 2008 by Robin Green

While “teamwork” has become somewhat of a buzzword in the corporate world, companies often make only a superficial effort to actually create a trusting team environment. Many managers using a learning management system continue to foster competitive work environments, believing that the strongest will rise to the surface.

As Tim Bryce writes, “The intent is to turn a heterogeneous working environment into a homogeneous environment whereby everyone is working in a concerted effort towards common goals. But do corporate managers truly understand teamwork? Not necessarily.” This becomes another obstacle to corporate homogenous efforts–the managers themselves often possess weak teamwork skills, and instilling these skills in others becomes difficult and unlikely.

A learning management system can be used not only to assign teams and individual tasks, but can organize teamwork skill training. Teamwork courses hosted on a learning management system can be an effective tool in performing these functions. Remember, both trainers and trainees benefit largely from team-building learning systems.

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Coggno.com is a leading provider of world-class online training.

December 9th, 2008 by Robin Green

Individualism is part of our cultural heritage, and is deeply ingrained in our learning systems. Whereas the rest of the world’s students wear uniforms to school, American students wear their freedom of expression to school, dressing in almost whatever they like. Social as well as academic competition is fierce, and students rarely work in teams outside the sport or music learning system departments. So it’s no surprise that when these students graduate and get jobs, they’re ill-equipped to work in a team setting.

Since many people complete their academic career without having developed collaborative skills, teamwork is something that needs to be taught in the workplace setting.  Teamwork refers to a set of skills, and like all skills, it must be taught and practiced and cultivated. Implementing a learning system to foster team-building capabilities becomes essential for team success.

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Coggno.com offers high-quality online training.

December 2nd, 2008 by Robin Green

“Teamwork,” according to Marvin Weisbord, is “the quintessential contradiction of a society grounded in individual achievement.” This is an interesting point to consider when using an LMS or a virtual world for collaborative work. It prompts questions like, is individualism actually best for the individual? Don’t individuals benefit more from teamwork?

For schools and companies using an LMS or other organization and communication technology, developing teams and collaborative learning is a piece of cake. Virtual teams can be aided by LMSs and virtual worlds to include individuals across all kinds of boundaries. Worlds like Second Life offer spaces for corporate purposes like conferencing, client feedback, community-building, and employee training. Additionally, business collaborators can use Second Life to construct products and process simulations to test new designs and concepts.

The global shift from production to knowledge and service work environments has been greatly facilitated by the flexibility that communication technology offers, and benefits not only the whole society but individuals within it.

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Coggno.com is a leading provider of premier online training courses.