What experiences have others had with similar technology?
As I read the literature it struck me that the research seemed to fall into 2 categories. Those that were looking for whether technology improved student collaboration (e.g. Blau & Caspi) and those that felt it was a great way to evidence whether or not the students had collaborated (e.g. Chu & Kennedy). Blau and Caspi found that students believed that their contributions to others work improved it but that others contributions to them made it worse! I thought that was brilliant! They also made interesting points about psychological ownership. Kessler Bikowski & Boggs found that in all groups there was an uneven split between the participants about how much work they contributed. It was always about 55%, 30%, 15%. If this is a general truth about group work, it seems insidious of educators to then mark individuals for their individual contribution. We should either be interested in the output of the group or the work of the individual. Not both.
What about the pedagogical approach?
In general I think I agree with Brodahl, Hadjerrouit, & Hansen who identified two pedagogical approaches being used, the social-constructivist learning theory and the community of practice, and their relationships to collaborative tools.
Did you get new ideas from the discussion in Moodle?
To be honest I have been disappointed with the level of discussion in Moodle. Instead of a discussion developing, people have just placed links to articles about the topic. Whilst this is useful and helps to broaden the information available to me, it is not actually a discussion. It is the equivalent of someone saying “here, read this as well”. Having said that I am equally guilty of doing this with other people's blogs. I think this is a fault caused by the structure of the discussion and blog posting requirements of the module.
What questions remain open?
I realized that the bigger question – to what extent does group work support individual student learning?, is an assumption that is implicit in the approach being used in the first place. As we are in an environment that requires all of our students to pass system wide assessments at the end of each semester, group work must be viewed through the prism of individual student learning which is going to be assessed in an individual assessment, very possible a timed exam. In that case I need to consider to what extent it is justified or valid for me to use it group work as a summative assessment? Would it be better if it was formative?
What new questions arise?
I think what I need to think about is how to use Google Docs effectively in an educational setting. I recently realized that I myself do not use google docs at all for collaborative projects in my every day work. I am at the moment involved in developing new course outlines for the college. This is ideal for Google docs but all of us in the team are used to emailing drafts to each other so that is what we are doing. Also, because our students are actually together most of the time, am I just trying to create a false reality by getting them to use Google Docs in a situation in which it wouldn't be used?
I am planning to take a much more “hands on” approach with the students in terms of monitoring their progress through the project. I think my focus will be on the extent to which it is a good tool for timely feedback from me, rather than monitoring contributions from the students
I’m not sure. I suppose the most useful would be to here form the experiences of others. I also need to think of a way to identify the best way to seek feedback from students. I am thinking of a survey
Hi Andrew, thank you for this summary. You point out some of the possible problems with collaborative group work, including variable rates of students' participation and the disconnect between a collaborative pedagogy and an individualist assessment regime. The second issue is one that I feel strongly about, as I believe that assessment regimes need to be considered as a part of the learning experience, rather than something added on to it and separate. Unfortunately, in our institution we are seeing the assessment driving the pedagogical horse more and more, so that it serves a bureaucratic, rather than a learning purpose and effective pedagogy is subsumed in this process.
ReplyDeleteWith regard to collecting feedback from students, it might be interesting to use more than one data collection tools. For example, you could survey the whole class to acquire some quantitative data, you could also ask a smaller number to provide more in-depth data through interviews.
I look forward to hearing how you proceed.
Neil
Andrew, you put my thoughts into words, better than I could have done. I too was frustrated (and just made a comment on my own personal blog) about all the links, which caused me to end up lost and spending so much time trying to find my way back to Moodle. You said it well, and perhaps we should consider limiting the number of links and promote more discussions.
ReplyDeleteI also just attended a great PD session over our break, about using Google Docs in a group project, It was a great session, but as of yet, I've not had an opportunity to use it. I think there are possibilities and look forward to seeing how you progress.
Nancy
Hi Andrew,
ReplyDeleteYou mentioned that you don't use google docs at work for collaborative projects, but you do use Sharepoint which is the same concept right?
I guess emailing documents back and forth is a tough habit to break and if we can't do it then can we expect our students to do it?? When I used google docs with my students, I found that some students were working offline and then updating their google doc when they finished thus taking out online collaboration from the equation!!! I think psychologically we feel comfortable and in control when the document is on our computer rather than it being in a cloud. Or perhaps it is just convenient to access the document from our computer rather than being restricted to having an internet connection in order to access it.
What plans do you have to make sure that students truly use google docs in a collaborative way rather than as a means to submit their work?