Our Guest Blogger for this week is Shelley Haydel, PhD. Dr. Haydel is an Associate Professor in the School of Life Sciences and a Researcher in the Center for Infectious Diseases and Vaccinology at the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University. She is posting about one of the most difficult areas in teaching for both students and faculty.
Group work presents unique challenges for both students and instructors. I always tell my students that they will never work in a vacuum. No matter their career choice, they will have to interact, communicate, and work effectively with others.
- Think about nurses – they must interact, communicate, and work effectively with physicians, other nurses, technicians, administrators, etc; and they must interact and effectively communicate with patients and family/friends of their patient.
- Think about working in a lab – in an effective research environment, everyone is working together towards a common goal. The same is true for group work. Students are working together as part of a team to accomplish a goal (i.e. an assignment).
Ultimately, it is the instructors responsibility to deal with all of these issues, and embedded within all of the group work problems is how to deal with grading. I use the following strategies for group interactions and group work grading:
- I meet with members of the group at least once during the semester to get the “pulse” of the group.
- For all assignments (written papers, oral presentations, etc.), all students complete partner evaluation rubrics with defined criteria.
- Peer assessments are confidential, so students alert me of problems and essentially “grade” their group partners in terms of participation, accountability, contributions, etc.
- Students assess each other at the end of each major assignment.
- The partner evaluation score is embedded into each student’s grade for each assignment. In other words, a portion of the grade for each assignment is based on contribution and participation within the group.
- Submitting the partner evaluation and the composite score (I use a range) from the partner evaluations can equal 10-20% of the grade for a particular assignment.
- Peer Evaluation - Oral Presentation
- Peer Evaluation - Grant Proposal
- Peer Evaluation - Group Project and Research
If you have ideas and techniques for working with groups,
please click on the pencil below and share your comments!
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