Projecting your authority
How do you handle students lack of teamwork ?
For those of us that give out group assignments, this is one of the challenging questions. Students need to contiually work on their team building skills--it is something we (career colleges) hear time and time again from employers and advsiory board members. But what do you do when one student doesn't participate in the group assignment or doesn't do their part of the assignment leaving their peers hanging?
One of the techniques I use is to grade students individually, not as a group. In addition, I ask each student to "grade" the other members of their team or group and explain why they would give the grade. Students who have done all the work have no problem identifying the student that didn't do their part. In order for this to be effective at the beginning of the project, I make sure the students understand how I will be grading from the very beginning.
Excellent! Thank you, that is a very good strategy.
Melissa Hartfield
I find that having both a course specific online orientation along with a personal email to be an effective method for initially establishing both my contact with students alongs with "projecting my authority." However, authority is something that is earned thru time via the online course.
Tell me a little bit more about the course specific online orientation. What do you have your students do in the online orientation class? It sounds very interesting Ron.
We actually have a 2 part online orientation. The first is a general orientation - I can send you then link if you like [I recall that we are not suppose to reveal our schools for CEE training]. This general orientation is intended to overview online learning and poses the question "are you a good candidate for online courses?" As research has shown the 18-22 year old range is not a good match for 100% online courses, whereas 25 and older has much higher completion rates.
The class specific orientation reviews the details of my class - assignments, discussion forums, video lectures, fieldtrips, quizzes, exams, and their final paper.
With both orientations students must login to Moodle and complete an assessment for each orientation - this step "verifies" they have viewed and understand online courses and learning at my college.
The general discription is enough Ron. Thank you very much for sharing!
I believe that asking students to grade other members of their group is the best way to get a clear picture of each individual's efforts toward the assignment. I steer clear from letter grades, however, as I don't want for the evaluaters to confuse effort with the quality of work provided. For example, if a student feels that the group as a whole deserves a B for an assignment, they should not hesitate to give a member of the group an "A" grade for effort.
I ask students to rank all students in the group, and give comments. Ranking requires them to consider carefully each member's activities, and not give everyone a 5 out of 5 rating. Comments are useful because many times, I will have students respond that Peter, Paul, and Mary contributed in that order, but the comments will show that they feel all three really "tied for first" in terms of contributions.
Thanks for sharing Nikki. Do your students find it difficult to rate their classmates?
Dr. Ernst,
I think that it is difficult to rate your peers in any circumstance, and it is certainly difficult when you know that the collegiate advancement of your peers hinges on that rating. In one of my class chats, I will go over the ranking assignment. We discuss the difficulties, I elicit questions, and explain that the students should feel free to make comments about their ranking. This loosens them up and prepares them to look at their groups' individual contributions critically.
Terrific suggestions Nikki. Thanks for sharing.
I basically suggest that students work problems out among themselves and not expect me to solve them. I suggest that they come to me as arbiter only if they have tried to work them out among themselves. I stress achieving win/win solutions as the optimal negotiations strategy.
Mark McMullen
Personally, I give the same group grade to students for all group projects assuming equal level of contributions. If some students do not participate in group projects, they will not receive a grade. I also ask group leaders to tell me at the end of each class the participation level of all team members in the group project!
Mark McMullen
I like the idea of assigning a group leader who then informs you how well each person contributed to the assignment. Do you find that the group leader is objective when informating you of the other student's participation?
Many contentious students are absolutely paranoid that their team will not contribute and they will be penalized. I think it's important to grade the individually.
I grade individually but I do take into consideration how each student works as a member of the team. I don't want to penalize students if they happen to have a weak team. At the same time, I do like to assign at least one group project so they begin to develop the skills to work as a team (which they will need when they begin their job).
I had a real issue with conflict in groups in BOTH of the online classes I facilitated the past session. In each group, there were two students who were at odds over the leadership of the group and who were fighting to control how it operated. I didn't find out about it until after the first assignment was submitted, although it's apparent to me NOW that I should have been more active in checking on the groups' progress in the discussion boards and chats.
In one of the groups, I tried to let the students handle the dissension first. I was reluctant to step right in because it was an MBA class and I can just imagine how MY boss would react if I were to go to him complaining about other team members. I kept my educational supervisor aware of the situation, though. The other students in the group decided to replace the "leader" of the group although they didn't formally tell her--and I should have required that they do this. Instead, they shut her out of things so that she came to me and asked to be put into another group, which I did.
This is what I'd ordinarily do with members who don't participate. But this past session, the conflict took the form of "she said, she said" where two group members were vying for control of the group. Part of the problem was that online students who are also working may have very different schedules. One of the "leaders" wanted to have the assignment done the morning of the day it was due, even though it didn't need to be submitted until midnight. The other "leader" wanted to submit her work the morning of the day it was due. Somewhat the same also happened with a group in another class. In future, I'll need to take a more proactive role in discussing this kind of issue with groups.
That is a challenging situation. One of the advantages of having students work in groups is that they begin to develop team building skills, which are important in the work world. The challenge is what you have described--students that don't work well together.
That is a fine technique and I completely agree with using it. Originally I was told that all group work needed to be graded as groups. But I could quickly see the inherent unfairness of that system. Almost inevitably, some did much more work than others. Why should the slackers get the same grade as the go-getters? Making the individual grading approach clear from the beginning really changes the group dynamics!
