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Teaching creativity through group work
Assessing Politics
In Politics seminars run by Helen Irving at the University of Technology, Sydney , several facilitator students (about 10%) are responsible every week for preparing to lead the discussion; each then launches and facilitates discussion in small sub-groups. Helen designed the approach to avoid the tedium of awful seminar presentations by the presenter with the other students not preparing, being passive or not turning up at all when it's not their turn to be the presenter.
Typically, as part of their preparation, the facilitator students write a seminar paper but they don't read it out to the group. After the discussions, these students finish writing up their seminar papers, and include their notes and critique of what's been discussed in their small groups and the larger group. Students hand in their papers and notes the day after the seminar - so they have 24 hours to tidy up their notes and do some integration into their paper, but aren't expected to do huge amounts of further research. Helen's assessment criteria require that students include their discussion notes and show evidence of linking them into their papers. The following week a different group of students would be responsible for preparing.
During the first seminar of the semester, Helen leads a discussion about ways of facilitating the small-group discussions. At the beginning of each new session she tends to give some very broad cues by saying something like "Last week we talked about X, so as part of your discussion you might like to explore the question of ...." . So if the student facilitator really hasn't thought of a starting question (and they're supposed to do this as part of their preparation) they could always start there, but it is more often a question which emerges in the middle of discussion. The students are not allowed to just read their paper - so that kind of anxiety and boredom is avoided. In fact, peer expectations encourage most of the non-facilitators to prepare - as each student has to take a turn at being the presenter, and as they have to incorporate other students' comments, they know that if they don't contribute then they can't expect their peers to contribute to discussion in the sessions they will faciltate.
Another version has the facilitator students working in a group to prepare and being able to give a five or ten minute overview (timed), but then having to lead discussion for the remaining time and incorporate the results of the discussion in their assessed work. This has a side benefit in that tutors have to learn about small group discussion facilitation approaches so that they can help their students to use them.
(Compiled from Video Case Studies: Teaching Matters, University of Technology, Sydney and personal communication with Helen Irving.)
Grading Contributions
Smith (1992) asked students who participate in groups to make a note of what they said or thought to the tutor at the end of the class. Then he graded the slips and as soon as possible after a class, while the class content was still fresh in his mind. Grades were limited to three points per class session so as to discourage excessive participation. The slips were returned at the next class with feedback comments. Most slips contain valid material and thus received one credit per item.
A claimed benefit of this method is that the students tended to rethink and rewrite what they said and in so doing reinforced their learning. It was also very useful for shy or quieter students who were allowed to write down what they were thinking or would like to have asked, and thus not need to feel so excluded. Moreover the tutor had the opportunity to include many of these ideas in the subsequent class so as to give more confidence to such students that their ideas were valued.
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