Get Your Students Hired
This is a general discussion forum for the following learning topic:
Enhancing Student Learning --> Organizing Student Learning Groups
Post what you've learned about this topic and how you intend to apply it. Feel free to post questions and comments too.
I have some experience with assigning student groups, but this module expanded my knowledge. I learned that optimal size is 6-8 members. A good rule of thumb is to not base more than 30% of their grade on group work.
Student monitoring helps the instructor to maintain a strong connection with every student.
Group assignment is a good practice for your class management. moving around the classroom, monitoring the groups, making observations helps you identify any areas of concern.
Learning experience:
Care needs taken when assigning weight of projects. One time I weighted the project 10% and a student passed the course that did not pass any unit exams. After that, I weighted it 5%.
Prior to student presentations I had each member of each student submit a rubric I created with a 1-5 scale to rate each student's participation including their own. Most often each person in the group received the same grade. If I saw a pattern of low participation by a certain student, a couple points would be subtracted.
Regarding monitoring the classroom, in a previous job I spoke during break to a student. I said, "Hello______how are you doing?"
She got scared and I asked her why. She responded that teachers do not usually speak to her. I shared that I speak with everyone. She began participating in class.
When forming learning groups for students it's important to diversify the groups and make sure that all different members of the group work collectively together.
A good point of interacting with every student even for a few seconds allow you as an instructor to recognize any concerns. I can also help the student to stay on task by showing them you notice them
Groups need to be small, if possible, and balance students that are already familiar with the subject and those that struggle because they are less experienced in the task.
Organizing the students into small groups can facilitate learning but grading can pose a challenge. Grading by the group and individual grades.
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Groups are great, it helps open up shy students gives them collaboration time and creativity and motivation to learn.
When creating a group for a project, one thing needs to be considered. This important matter is to develop assignments that require a fair division of labor. One of the main reasons that student groups fail is that some individuals feel that not everyone is doing their fair share of the work. A way to prevent this feeling of disparity is to assign each group member an operation or contribution that interconnects with the work of other group members.
Effective classroom monitoring allows the teacher to connect with all students.
When forming student work groups it is important to create groups with diversity.
importance of planning and structure, keeping the group's attention and giving feedback. also, let your team interact with each other.
I can see where knowing the strengths of each student when creating a group would be important. My situation is more f;uid so sometimes it's just based on a feeling that a certain student might be more of a leader and others that might need extra help.
Now I understand why at my previous job, for group activities, they would go through the room assigning each person a number, 1-5 (or however many groups they wanted). Then the groups were completely random and of equal size that were not too large. Makes sense now!
I learned, in this section, how important group work is. One thing that I thought was interesting was that the suggestion was randomized groups. I think this would be a good idea at an adult level because it gives a level of diversity and various levels of background information. It was also interesting to hear that it is not suggested to change their groups, even upon request. This makes sense because adults will have to work with people they don't always agree with or like in the "real world." Finally, I like that the group suggestion was 6-8 people. I usually have smaller groups, but it also might depend on the size, level, and difficulty of the project. Overall, I learned a lot.
Develop assignments that require a fair division of labor. One of the main reasons that student groups fail is that some individuals feel that not everyone is doing their fair share of the work.