In reading multiple blogs from various distance education
experts (see list of blogs below), assessing group work and collaboration has
been a headache for instructors for a long time. George Seimans (Laureate, 2008) offers an
interesting perspective in saying that students, since kindergarten, have been
conditioned to think in a singular fashion.
From day one of our academic careers our success has been largely
dependent on...ourselves. Not only has
education conditioned students to be loners, but the set up for most group work
and learning communities have always given rise to the doers and the followers,
the hard workers and the slackers, and those that work best alone and those
that work well with others.
Assessing collaborative work presents an interesting
situation where the instructor has to create learning expectations and
experiences that are aimed at developing in-depth learning, but the instructor
must also take into account the learning style of the participant. One thing that I have noticed in my
post-secondary education is that instructors in educational classes are quick
to point out that all lessons should take the learners preferred learning style
into account. However, these same instructors
present learning experiences to higher education students that neglect their
learning styles. This is important to
think about this when assessing collaborative work.
The undesirable scenarios created through collaboration
present instructors with the hard task of assessing collaborative efforts in
the distance learning environment.
Seimans (Laureate, 2008) contends that distance education should mix
individual assessments and collaborative assessments to provide opportunities
to measure learning in both scenarios.
Luke’s Learning Blog (address listed below) also gives great insight
into assessing collaboration, asserting that assessing students exactly the
same as the other members of the group is simply assessing individual work that
has been done in a group setting. When analyzing one particular sociology blog
(listed below), I noticed that this could very easily be the case if someone
were to simply generalize the group learning process. Instructors must remember that collaboration
in a distance learning community must be treated differently than a traditional
group project setting, and evaluate the group holistically and individually.
One of the age old problems with group work, even in a
traditional setting, is the group member that is reluctant to participate in
the ongoing collaboration. In most cases
the first reaction of the learning community is to turn to the instructor for
help. However, the inner workings of the
group should always be the responsibility of the members of the learning
community. Dewiyanti, Brand-Gruwel,
Jochems, and Broers (2007) contend that all members should keep a constant line
of communication, determine their goals and strategies, and handle all internal
conflicts that may arise. By allowing
the community to deal with problems that arise, the instructor is giving the
members responsibility in hopes of giving them more of a sense of connectedness
to the other members. Instead of feeling
as though policy has been dictated, the group members feel a part of the
process. Another commonly used practice
is peer review as a means to motivate students to do their part in the
collaborative process. Which, based on some research, is a highly debated concept. Palloff and Pratt (2007) contend that peer reviewing is a way to allow students to hold each other accountable for their actions and keep others focused on the task being completed. However, Weimar (see blog address below) suggests in her blog that this may be counterproductive to the learning
process. It was interesting to read how
students were more concerned about doing their part of the process and less
focused on the content and knowledge obtained.
See the following blogs for more information:
Dewiyanti, S., Brand-Gruwel,
S., Jochems, W., & Broers, N. (2007). Students experiences with
collaborative learning in
asynchronous computer-supported collaborative learning
environments. Computers in Human
Behavior, 23, 496-514.
Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer). 2008. Learning
communities. [Video webset]. Retrieved from
https://class.waldenu.edu/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_tab_group_id=_2_1&url=%2Fwebapps%2Fblackboard%2Fexecute%2Flauncher%3Ftype%3DCourse%26id%3D_2643771_1%26url%3D
Palloff, R. M., & Pratt, K. (2007). Building online
learning communities: Effective strategies for the virtual classroom. San
Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
As an online instructor, how would you learn each student’s learning style and then assess them based on this information?
ReplyDeleteDo you think instructors should intervene in an online learning community at any time?
Learning styles surveys are available in print or online. While initially I thought it would be difficult to determine learning styles in a distance education course, I finally concluded that it would be no different than a traditional setting. The purpose of that statement was to highlight the fact that some students do not learn best in a collaborative setting. This should be weighed heavily when determining assessments that gauge learning.
DeleteIn regards to the instructor stepping in, I am sure at some point it would need to happen. However, it should not happen until all efforts by the group to resolve problems have been exhausted.
Siemens (2008) uses the terms “individualistic” or “singular” to define the traditional learning model which promotes and rewards personal efforts instead of collaborative work in a context where work has become a collective endeavor. This is the system in which I was educated from Kindergarten to college. That pedagogy encouraged memorization which is personally assessed and discouraged creativity and experimentation which is generally nurtured by interaction with peers.
ReplyDeleteMy senior project as a Computer Science student, a hotel management system, was my first collaborative academic assignment. The grading was partly systematically collective for the project and partly individualistic for group members’ individual performance on presenting their respective sections of the system and answering related questions. I think that this mixed assessment method can be applied in distance learning by having individual group members perform specific tasks and being held accountable for their respective performance. Such an approach is likely to encourage participation as suggested by Siemens (2008).
Your comments are wonderful and to the point. I can honestly say that until this course I have never had a collaborative assignment. Throughout my Masters Degree I only completed individual assignments. While collaboration does encourage creativity, are there individual assignments that can do the same?
DeleteCollaborative groups in a traditional and online setting does have issues sometimes with a member not doing their share portion of the work. One strategy that has worked well with me and my classroom students is assigning everyone a job or duty. This eliminates the issue of one person doing all the work or saying he/she didn't know what to do.
ReplyDeleteHonestly, this is an awesome and informative article for the readers.
ReplyDeleteThank's
Distance MBA