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Improving teaching, learning and

feedback through group work

Alan Boyle

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Many years ago…

I taught a second year metamorphic petrology

course comprising 12 lectures and 6 three hour

practical sessions.

Each of the ~40 students had to complete a

synthetic map and sample-based project by the end

of the last 4 practical sessions.

Because they were all working on the same

problem, but supposedly producing independent

work, I had to stop them from talking to each other.

I also had a large number of very similar project

reports to mark at the end with little time for student

feedback.

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My first ‘ah-ha’ moment

My colleague Jim Marshall mentioned the group

word to me in 1990

He had attended a staff development session…

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I split the class into ~8 groups

I redesigned the project so that parts of it could be

split up and allocated within groups (data collection

and analysis), but parts required them to get

together on a regular basis to check things were

consistent (synthesis/evaluation) – BLOOM’s

Cognitive Domain.

But, students could now talk to each other within

groups, and it was easier for me to get around 8

groups rather than 40 individuals.

The practical sessions became much more

manageable and enjoyable – KRAFTWOHL’s

Affective Domain.

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Positives

The groups became naturally protective of their own

intellectual copyright. I didn’t have to be a

policeman, I could be a friend.

The atmosphere changed from a closed one to more

open collaborative one.

The standard of work improved, with reports being

more thorough, partly because the groups had more

time (5 students’ time rather than one).

I spent much less time marking, and so could afford

time to discuss the assessment outcomes of the

project reports with each group in a meeting where

they could talk their group mark up or down.

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Typical positive student view

“I liked the idea of the group work, not wanting to let

people down pushed me on to do more work, and

really helped in mineral identification and analysis.”

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Negative student views – the loner

“The module has been weighted unfairly.

35% of the module was based on a group

exercise, this is far too high percentage.

An individual could produce good work but be let

down by the input of other members of the group.

A third of the marks of this module were dependent

upon who you ended up getting in your group.”

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Negative Group Dynamics 1

We're having problems within our group that have

only become apparent today.

XXXXX has just sent us a message while we were

finishing our report to say the only thing he is

coming back to the department for is to tell you he's

leaving.

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Negative Group Dynamics 2

1. I just emailed to say that only 2 of our group [of 5] turned up to write up our project and so it is going to be difficult for just the two of us to write up the whole thing as we don't have full sets of information.

2. The other 2 are not including us in their discussions and we are worried they will submit something without us.

3. I think everything is back on track now; I think there was just a lot of confusion!

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Quite a few students have the

misconception that working in a

team after graduation with paid

colleagues will be completely

different to working in a team with

students.

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What do I do now?

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Some important points

I always choose the groups and make them as equal as

possible (academic ability, gender, ethnicity…)

Set the group project up so that

The data collection can be divided up into group member size chunks.

Preliminary analysis and synthesis can take place before all the data are

collected.

Groups have to meet up to discuss evidence, synthesise models and decide

what further data to collect to test their developing model.

Iterate 3.

Provide a way to evaluate reasonableness of solution – in this case use

numerical modelling software to test the reasonableness of the PT conditions.

Tightly constrain the report (word and page limits) so that groups have to think

hard about what is important to include.

Make the group self-assess their project (including individual contributions)

and use this as a starting point for an end-project group interview.

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Feedback

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However, getting students to peer-

assess each other by agreeing

actual marks has been difficult…

Second ‘ah ha’ moment:

WebPA featured at an eddev

meeting about 2 years ago and

Dan Hibbert then helped me a lot.

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WebPA

I use the same standard setup used by Dan:

Student mark is M*0.5 + M*0.5*F

Where M is project mark and F is peer-assessment factor

F results from student peer assessment using

questions like:

Attendance where and when it matters?

Level of commitment to the project?

Taking the initiative?

Completed allotted tasks on time?

Overall contribution to the success of the project?

Does it work?

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WebPA 2013

Used CTL so ran

with groups of ~6

5 groups had

essentially the

same mark

(success?)

One group

outperformed.

Raw marks give

little indication of

individual

performance.

35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 850

5

10

15

20

25

30

Count

GrpRAW

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35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 850

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

Count

WebPA

WebPA 2013

Application of

WebPA peer

assessment

factors spread the

individual marks.

Some students in

the ‘standard’

groups

outperformed

students in the

‘outperform’ group.

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Comparison of group marks to final

exam marks

Bearing in mind correlations between different assessment

modes can be lower than expected, the correlation (Pearson

r = 0.657 is encouraging).

The student peer-assessment is perhaps as good as that

achieved by academic colleagues

40 50 60 70 80

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

Exa

m

GrpRAW

Equation y = a + b*x

Weight No Weighting

Residual Sum of Squares

7243.0616

Pearson's r 0.04206

Adj. R-Square -0.02596

Value Standard Error

ExamIntercept 50.08599 43.06745

Slope 0.15874 0.62855

40 60 80

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

Exa

m

WebPA

Equation y = a + b*x

Weight No Weighting

Residual Sum of Squares

4121.68922

Pearson's r 0.65723

Adj. R-Square 0.41617

Value Standard Error

ExamIntercept -16.75703 14.95252

Slope 1.13567 0.21706

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Summary

In my experience:

Groups are affective, which makes them effective.

Groups facilitate better quality feedback.

WebPA is an effective way of assessing individual

performance in groups.

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Learning Domains

Developed by US-based committee of examiners formed after a 1948 convention.

Cognitive handbook well known from Bloom et al. (1956) taxonomy.

Affective handbook less well known, but Kraftwohl et al. (1964) presented a taxonomy.

Psychomotor was not reported on, but others have developed tools, e.g. Simpson (1972).

Psycho-

motor Affective

Cognitive

Cognitive domain is well known in HE,

but other two less well. Do they matter?

Almost 60 years and we still struggle!