One of the key aspects of contemporary Higher Education (HE) instruction and assessment is group task. Perhaps years of emphasis on pedagogy of 'collaborative learning' brought about this global phenomenon of classroom-based group presentations. My estimate is that the global average of assessment weight for group works could be about 30% of all grades given.
As an instructor in HE, what do you personally do to make group presentations more meaningful, interesting and significant learning activity? Do you know of some colleagues who seem to be more successful?
From a teacher's / instructor's perspective, I would recommend to get regularly and closely involved in the making of the group presentation.
For instance, in my classes on Software Engineering I used to have development teams whose task it was to build some database system from scratch over several months. I played the customer who has a vague awareness of his own requirements (which is usual for software projects, by the way ;-) In order to guarantee a successful product at the end, I as a customer invited the resp. teams for regular (e.g. weekly) short discussions about the progress of the work. Evidently, this has several advantages for both sides. When the time comes for the students to do the final group presentation, they will have a tremendous amount of experience in presenting what is really important about their product and they will be well-prepared for any more or less clever questions or criticisms of the 'audience' (the other students, or me).
I am sure that this scenario can be applied to other sorts of group assignments. For instance, I have also applied it in the less demanding case of small seminar work in a course on Knowledge-Based Systems. Same procedure, same end test.
However, there is also the following problem for you as a teacher. How do you evaluate the learning process and outcome afterwards at an individual level, because I presume that it will be required by your faculty that each student get's his or her own grade? After many years of research and experimentation I managed to work out a general assessment model which handles this challenge in an innovative way. If you are interested, just contact me through ResearchGate
@ Ivo Carneiro de Sousa : I don't think the problem you mentioned is characteristic for group work as you define it. Anyway, for me the terms "group work" and "team work" are synonyms. Important is what you make of it by way of a contract between lecturer and student(s).
However, if team work means, fixing the tasks each member of the team has to accomplish - and thus is responsible for, then at the end of the journey it may turn out, that each has done his or her share, and nobody felt responsible for the whole. In other words: there hasn't been genuine work at a team level, thus I would call this kind of work neither group work nor team work, at its very best there may be a group product, comparable to a reader consisting of several papers by different authors, held together because of a common theme, but without any co-operation among the contributors.
@ Jae Park : No, it's not. You may have a look at the web site devoted to my reference model. Also check my publications here at ResearchGate. Look for "Team-Mate-Dilemma"
Dear Paul,
I wen to check your gem (Solution of the Team-Mate-Dilemma vs 5). I attach it here so that others can read easily.
I find it valuable for assessment.Its bottleneck is the two questionnaires of "team members' effectiveness impacts and team members' cooperation weights".
It is a peer assessment. Is your assessment also factored in ?
Surely, assessment should be formative.
I look forward to knowing what other colleagues do to add value their students' group presentations from instructional perspectives too.
Data Solution of the Team-Mate-Dilemma vs 5
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