Posts Tagged ‘group work strategies’
February 8 - Group Work: A Bill of Rights and Responsibilities for All Members
By: Maryellen Weimer, PhD in Teaching Professor Blog
I recently revisited something I have always considered a great resource. It originally appeared in a 1992 issue of The Teaching Professor and was published then as a Study Group Member’s Bill of Rights. It outlined what individuals had the right to expect when they participated in study groups. Students not only have rights, they also have responsibilities. Those rights and responsibilities are relevant in any group activity used to accomplish educational goals. The version below attempts to capture those larger expectations and duties.
June 10 - Group Work: Are Student-Selected Groups More Effective?
By: Maryellen Weimer, PhD in Teaching and Learning
If the course involves a graded group project, should instructors let students form their own groups or should the instructor create the groups? This decision is not always easy or obvious. Some students lobby hard to form their own groups, arguing that knowing each other ensures that they will be able to work together productively. On the other hand, in the world of work, most of the time employees do not get to pick their collaborators. There’s a task, and those with knowledge and relevant skills are formed into a group and assigned to complete the project, solve the problem, or develop the product.
February 23 - Group Exams and Quizzes: The Benefits of Student Collaboration
By: Maryellen Weimer, PhD in Teaching Professor Blog
Have you ever used any sort of group testing activity? The approach is not without benefits. Most students find exams enormously stressful and abundant research documents that high levels of test anxiety can compromise performance. Said more bluntly, students can know the information, but be so anxious they can’t summon it for the exam. Letting students work together on test questions reduces that anxiety considerably. It could be a case of “misery loves company” or the “two heads are better than one” scenario.
July 1 - Group Work: Should Your Top Students Work Together?
By: Maryellen Weimer, PhD in Instructional Design
One of the common objections to group work is that bright, capable students are held back when they share group activities and grades with students of lesser ability. This is of concern to teachers and students. Often very good students strongly oppose group work. They worry that an ineffective group with weak or nonproductive members will compromise their grades. Many openly express the belief that they can do the activity, project, paper, or presentation better on their own and would prefer doing it that way.
May 28 - The Benefits of Using Classroom Assistants
By: Ken MacMillan in Teaching and Learning
I work in a department that regularly enrolls 250 students in first-year classes, as do many other departments in colleges and universities. In my case, the situation is complicated by a small graduate program, too few teaching assistants, and an inability to break the larger classes into smaller sections for discussion. This makes for a very challenging teaching situation. I use groups in the large class one day per week, using activities I described previously in The Teaching Professor (March 2003). Since then, I have worked on solving the staff problem with senior undergraduate students. I call them classroom assistants (CAs).
January 5 - Making Peer Assessment Work for You
By: Maryellen Weimer, PhD in Educational Assessment
“We cannot assume … that students will learn how to become better group members simply by participating in group activities.” Diane Baker (reference below) makes this observation in a first-rate article on peer assessment in small groups. Here’s a sampling of the ideas, information, and resources included in her article.
December 9 - Six Tips for Effective Writing Groups
By: Kathryn Linder, M.A. in Effective Teaching Strategies
By offering students a supportive group for writing assignments and research projects, students can form strong learning communities and feel less isolated when they see others around them struggling to generate ideas, craft thesis statements, or write creative transitions. Allowing students to develop friendships around writing is one way to help them to see writing—often
September 10 - Dealing with Free Riders
By: Maryellen Weimer, PhD in Teaching and Learning, Teaching Professor Blog
What makes students hate group work? A 2003 study found that getting a poor grade on a group project and having a free-rider in the group were the two factors most highly predictive of negative attitudes toward group work. Students want to be in groups where the work is shared equally—don’t we all? So what
August 21 - Group Work Tip: Make Leaders Accountable for Group Performance
By: Maryellen Weimer, PhD in Effective Teaching Strategies
Faculty who regularly use group work are always on the lookout for new and better ways of handling those behaviors that compromise group effectiveness—group members who don’t carry their weight and the negative attitudes students frequently bring with them to group work.
March 24 - Designing Group Work
By: Maryellen Weimer, PhD in Teaching and Learning, Teaching Professor Blog
On one of my recent road trips, I had a stimulating conversation with two colleagues during which we discussed group work and the challenge of designing good activities for groups. Although the problems that emerge when students work in groups cannot be completely prevented by well-designed activities, they can certainly be made to occur less frequently or to lesser degrees. Let me offer some examples.
