It has been stated that faculty members may be unaware of the effective strategies to manage conflict and some just keep watching without any effective guidance. After navigating the internet about this issue, I have found that there are some unpretentious efforts at some colleges worldwide that offer students courses on learning conflict resolution skills preparing them to the work market, but what about their teachers? Wouldn’t it be wiser to combine students’ training with training of the educators in order to spare the students catastrophic sequelae? It has been stated that not only inexperienced but also seasoned instructors may ignore conflict just because they are not effectively prepared to handle these situations.

In addition to my perspective, I will present some notions suggested in the literature which can be beneficial to the academia when confronted with conflict in their classes.

What are the effective methods for avoiding a negative conflict?

• Communicate clear intentions, assign intentional groups (diverse with more than one woman), develop protocols and structures for group work and hold individuals accountable for their own work.
• Ensure learner participation in collaboration through demonstrating the value of group learning by sharing research outcomes on the benefits of collaboration and giving feedback on both the product and process of group work.
• Help team members to overcome communication barriers and facilitate cultural understandings through encouraging them to actively communicate information about their motives and goals.
• Guide the collaborative process by carefully observing students’ interactions and then demonstrating and modelling collaboration skills.
• Advise students to seek technical training if they have difficulties in using technology, as proficient users of technology tend to see conflict as a positive influence in teamwork.
• Conduct mid-semester course evaluations in which students write short reflections about the course and their learning growth.
• If conflict resolution skills are to be taught in a separate course, then it’s better to avoid delay between learning and being able to utilise the skills, as this can only inhibit the integration of these skills into the assigned collaborative tasks.

When should instructors interfere robustly?

• If individual group members frequently agree to decisions they do not entirely support to avoid conflict.
• If some team members remain uncooperative.
• If disruption or disrespect spreads within the collaborative group.

How do instructors manage conflicts in their classes?

• Detect initial symptoms of conflict in the group to solve problems before they reach a stage of difficult resolution.
• Determine which type of conflict you have to deal with. Instructors are expected to understand the dynamics of group operating in such circumstances (competition, avoidance, accommodation, compromise and collaboration) and the successful different strategies that the participants can adopt to handle their conflicts. While hot or positive conflict may lead to creativity and activity between the parties, cold or negative conflict hinders communication because the conflict is denied.
• Allocate the adequate time to perform useful discussions and find solutions.
• Context, culture and type of personality should be taken into account to resolve conflict.
• Bear in the students’ minds that the group performance depends on the members’ ability to effectively deal with the conflict as it arises, which determines whether the collaborative process succeeds or fails.  
• Help the students to understand that a well-managed conflict increases self-esteem, development of communication skills, improvement in decision-making processes, opportunity for making critical assessments, and social development. All of which will contribute to a successful work life.
• There is no appropriate or inappropriate strategy to deal with conflict. Any approach can be right or wrong according to different situations, yet adopting a collaborative behaviour would appear more appropriate.

– If a group member tries to manage conflict through competition, you may provide your students with a process to deal with the difficult team member by scheduling a group crisis meeting or you may directly intervene if necessary. As a last resort, you may choose to remove the uncooperative member if disruption starts to arise within the group.

– If group members chose to use avoidance, try to address their fears of the consequence and help them discover what kind of behaviour is the most appropriate within the group because they might just be silent until they figure it out. Avoiding method may be the best way to cope with personal conflicts, which may not yield to collaborative discussions.

– If the group members opt for accommodation, you might not want to interfere, but keep encouraging them to discuss their points of view. Maybe voting on a disputed issue can help.

– If the teammates adopt the method of compromise, then you can force them to collaborate by designing group activities in a way that empowers the group to only put contributors’ names on each assignment.

In conclusion, conflict is a natural consequence of joining diverse cultures and outlooks and cannot be avoided completely. Although groups can develop their own approaches to handle conflicts, guidance of the faculty in a timely manner is invaluable to guarantee a safe, healthy management and protect students from bad experiences.