My most recent pedagogical obsession is not, as you might think, social media fasts, but rather working out ways to effectively create group projects. Honestly I consider this one of my serious shortcomings as a professor. I really as of yet have not created a group project with which both the students and I were happy with the results. Something always goes wrong. This is not to say that there haven’t been good ones (and some total misfires) but I have yet to really figure out the best way to do it. Part of my problem comes from not having this modeled for me in graduate school (we in the humanities are more accustomed to working solo) coupled with my own few past experiences as a student, in which I greatly dislike working in groups. But beyond that I think it is a substantial problem with both the way institutions are designed and with student expectations. It is hard to evaluate students individually (what the institution requires) yet try to hold the whole group accountable. And I struggle with this, because I want to encourage and evaluate students for who they are, but on the other hand I see as part of my job to teach students how to work in groups. I think most of the kinds of work environments they are likely to end up in will require working in groups, and internet projects do to their complexity require groups.
So here is what I am trying this semester for my EMAC 4325, Privacy, Surveillance, and Control on the Internet . . .
The focus of the class is on semester long research projects where each group has a public website/blog covering one aspect of the class. So for the whole semester groups have to work together to produce their project. The project is designed to require a range of skills, design, writing, coding, image manipulation, video and audio editing etc.
I came up with two basic rules for this project:
- Everybody in the group gets the same project grade (which is 50% of the final grade).
- If you are unhappy with a member of your group, i.e. feel that they are not sufficiently contributing, you can fire them from your team.
I put together these two rules from different projects I saw others do, although neither project put them together. On the first day of class I explained these rules and then handed them out the long detailed sheet which contained all the information on the project. Part of the project, indeed the first thing they had to do was come with community rules which described how the group was going to function, what initial responsibilites would be, and finally what the means by which they could dismiss a member of the group would be. In other words they had to write a group constitution of sorts complete with reasons and methods by which they would dismiss someone. (I did explain that in every case a meeting with me would be necessary, but I did this mainly as a way to make sure the group rules were followed, if a group decides to remove someone then I plan to support them.)
If someone is removed from a group then they become a group of one, responsible for their own project (which frankly is quite a bit of work).
Do I think this will solve all of the group assignment problems? No. But I think this probably represents more realistically how groups function outside of academia, they succeed or fail as a group, it doesn’t really matter if you work really hard, harder than anyone else around, you still need the group (ask Lebron James about this). By focusing on the group I won’t get caught trying to figure out team dynamics and what went wrong, assigning blame (like restaurant wars on Top Chef), instead everyone succeeds, or everyone fails. Simple . . . hopefully.
The next thing I did was get them divided into groups.
This was actually the most difficult part of the class, so far. I wanted students to be able to have a say in what group they joined, so that they were working on a topic that interested them, but I also wanted to avoid people just pairing up with people whom they have worked before and are friends. I also wanted to make sure that each group got a diversity of talent. I contemplated having them pick teams (schoolyard style) but thought that would end up being a bit ridiculous and isolating to the people who were not picked. Instead I had each student write on a one side of a notecard their name, on the other side they wrote the three topics that interested them the most, and then the three skills they would bring to the project, creating anonymous mini-resumes. I then selected one person for each group, and subsequently that person got to pick from the notecards one person for their team. On the whole this worked out, everyone got in a group that interested them, and the talent in every group is pretty diverse, and groups were picked based on talent not prior relationships or popularity.
Overall, three weeks into the semester, I am happy with how the groups are progressing. I have started to give them weekly feedback, always directed at the group rather than individuals. You can see the complete details of the project at the class website, along with links to all the ongoing projects.
I’ll write about this again at the end of the semester . . .
My field (philosophy) has the same kind of problem. I’m trying to design a course for next semester that pushes the students to collaborate and I’m running into the same sort of problems. I like your solutions, but I’m not sure the “fire” option would really work in a 100 level course, so . . . I’m curious what other forms you’ve tried in the past.
(btw, I love this argument-supporting typo: “me in the humanities are more accustomed to working solo”)
Do you suggest that each team pick a project manager (or managing editor)? Until recently I advised an undergraduate online journal, AngeLingo [http://angelingo.usc.edu], and found a PM keeps everyone focused. It’s also realistic modeling for post-grad work environments.
I’ve fed all your students’ blogs into my reader and will watch their progress over the term.
Thanks for sharing your design. I’m proposing to teach a new hybrid class in my department (writing composition at USC) and your design gave me ideas for having student manage their own work flow.
@Kathi
I didn’t assign a project manager per se, but that was one of the skills that I had them list on their pseudo resumes, so most of the groups ended up making that a task of someone.
Have you ever read up on Team-Based Learning? Michaelson and Fink:
http://books.google.com/books?id=8S8efQkqeqIC&lpg=PR7&ots=ten55AIwZf&dq=team-based%20learning%20michaelsen&lr&pg=PA11#v=onepage&q&f=false
Fink also has a newer book:
http://books.google.com/books?id=yycqudpQkQwC&lpg=PA134&dq=team-based%20learning%20fink&pg=PA134#v=onepage&q=team-based%20learning%20fink&f=false
Similar ideas. If you Google them both, you can find the original paper that outlined their main thesis for most of their works that came after.
I’ve also appreciated some of the things I’ve picked up from reading Richard Felder (Engineering at NCSU). For example, he tends to chuck the idea that you should form groups based on ‘learning styles’ alone – and that its probably more important to ‘diversify’ your groups based on talents and liabilities, followed by perhaps, knowledge and experience with the subject matter.
Felder, R. (2007). Resources in Science and Engineering Education (website.) http://www.ncsu.edu/felder-public/
An approach to designing group projects from AcademHack: http://ht.ly/2GMrA
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I think it’s great that you are sharing some of the high-level responsibility with the students by allowing them to kick a member off the team. As concerns the evaluations, have you considered taking the same approach and having their final evaluations be student-driven? Each team member would evaluate the other members. You’d then review the evaluations and adjust as you saw fit. This process has a potential conflict with the ability to kick a person out of a group, of course. How would a team-of-one get evaluated? Only by you? (Might create some incentive for people to try to get kicked off their team if they thought they stood a better chance of a positive evaluation from you, but that’s a dangerous game.)
“@academicdave: How I designed my group project this semester: http://bit.ly/bZXdNc The one where everyone (cont) http://tl.gd/64i57u
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This looks really interesting. I like the Firing rule, although in my experience sometimes this is down to personality friction rather than performance factors. If we’re modelling the “workplace”, then students have to be aware that groupwork is often frustrating and people can be difficult to work with. Successful group work is about developing strategies and skills to manage that.
What I would suggest is why you need to have groups when you have a wiki at hand. Surely they can all collaborate on the themes that you lay out rather than force them into groups. Otherwise why not make them publish their group rules online and open for comment?
This is a really interesting way to manage group projects, my previous experience of education has been Fine Arts based but my first teaching post was on a BSc in Computer Video Games which had some very heavy weighting towards group work. In my current possition on a Media Arts course i am trying to negotiate intergrating more group work into the program.
I recently went to the Media Education Summit in Birmingham (UK) and attended a pannel about group work that suggested the idea of a collective point system, the project is given a mark (grade point) which is multiplied by the number of members in the group and then it is left to the group to divide the score between the members. Usually resulting in equal shares but sometimes students are aware of this and are willing to put in less work for a smaller slice of the pie at the end.
I’m still not sure how i feel about the approach apart from it is interesting. You approach to self organised groups is a good one, where there restrictions on what students could put on their CV’s as skills? (for example pick 3 from this list that you think you are best at)
I’m currently doing all the admin for our Group Project on a BSc in Games Design (not the same one as Mr. Hook), and I’ve gone through many, many variations.
Previously if they were sat together in a tutorial they formed a group – but they were all Games Design Students so they had a similar skill set in theory.
Now we have 6 different awards, so different skill sets that make up the Game Design Group Project. I get them to sign up for game idea they wish to work on (the ideas are submitted at the end of the 1st year and are mulled over during the summer) – but there are different amounts of students from different awards, reflecting the numbers of students.
There work is a group mark and an individual mark is driven from a peer assessment (a modifier of 20% this semester – 50% next semester)
Our group size has also risen to about 15 students and we’ve made steps to make it so they are all timetabled together. Last year we encouraged a lot of online collaboration and it didn’t quite take off in the way I hoped.
We don’t allow people to be fired form the group and one of our greatest issues is having lots of carrot and very little stick.
One of the best group experiences I had in graduate school had an evaluative bit at the end of the time. We had 100 percentage points to assign and could assign them in whatever amount we felt was appropriate to the different members of our group. My group was pretty fantastic (it actually spoiled me for all group work from there on out…) so I ended up just dividing them all up equally, but I can see how that would help the instructor in evaluating who did what. Actually, now that I think about it, I’m not sure what she did with those percentage points, whether they affected our project grade, or fed into our participation grade or what. But I felt very empowered by the process, at least.
101: Thinking about your upcoming Wikipedia project. Reading @academicdave’s post about group work http://bit.ly/bcxYbW
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Great idea! I have found that group projects can be very frustrating since students need a lot of structure and really have no training in project management.
This is why I built Enterthegroup.com which is a free site for students to manage their group projects online. It provides tools and advice so that they can get more out of their work.