Evaluating Student Participation
Can you really rely on students to evaluate their own and other students participation. I have seen non-contributing students take credit for stuff they did not do and group leaders willing to share credit where it has not been earned.
I have witnessed the same thing in our labs where they work in groups. Most of our students believe it's enough to hand in a sheet with stuff written on it even though they have no idea what it means or how to get the answers them selves. Also, We have tried a small verion of this with something called Self Studey. They are assigned chapters and questions are asked about that material during quizes. I would say it's a fair estimate if 1 in 100 actually do the reading.
This stuff sounds great on paper but I have not seen anything from my students that would suggest they will take the initiative on their own to learn anything. Google gives them answers. Whether they understand those answers or not is irrelevant.
While it is true that some students will never, no matter what we do, take responsibility for their own learning. Many, however, can be inspired to pursue the knowledge and understanding that they need for advancement in their careers. To inspire them they must see that we are also engaged in ongoing learning, which means we do not know everything. We also need to constantly show the relevance of what they are learning. If we can't show that something is relevant, why are we teaching it? They also need to feel encouraged to learn, maybe even enticed to learn rather than forced to learn useless information like they did in high school. Group work can be exciting for many, but for others it is a total loss. We need to do it because team work is an ever increasing part of many professions but we can't put to much weight on its grading since that can skew the grades.
Having a group assignment is DEFINITELY more work for the teacher than managing students who are participating individually only.
Pick group work very intentionally. EX: Will they need to work in teams on this sort of thing after this course is over? Are there teamwork related learning objectives in the course? Will diversity benefit the final outcome? Are there conflict/team management learning objectives in the course? Are there very few pieces of specialized equipment to go around? Etc...
Once you do assign a group effort, you suddently become not only the teacher of the class, but also the team manager for each group! Unlike a team manager, you don't get to interview and screen applicants for your teams. You must work with everyone you have, which means that on top of being an excellent and very organized manager, you must also be a compassionate leader. It takes more time to be compassionate, not less, so your communication must be efficient. By this I mean you must be a very good listener (both to what is being said, and also to what is being felt). I would advise one-on-one conversations with every student in addition to team-meetings with you and each team.
You must be vigilant. I have found myself doing spot checks of the un-engaged looking students, so they know that I will be assessing whether or not they know their stuff.
Like I said - more work not less, so prepare and assign group efforts wisely!
