...1007/s10734-009-9216-y Groupwork as a form of assessment: common problems and recommended solutions W. Martin Davies Published online: 20 March 2009 Ó Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009 Abstract This paper reviews some of the literature on the use of groupwork as a form of assessment in tertiary institutions. It outlines the considerable advantages of groupwork but also its systemic associated problems. In discussing the problems, the paper considers issues such as ‘‘free riding’’ and the ‘‘sucker effect’’, issues associated with ethnic mix in groups, and the social dilemma problem—in which students face conflicting demands between altruism and self-interest. The paper then outlines several models of effective groupwork and makes suggestions for implementing groupwork tasks. The paper also looks at the key assessment tasks which are commonly employed—namely, additive, conjunctive, disjunctive and discretionary tasks—and assesses which are most suited to groupwork. The paper considers the related issues of task complexity, recognition for effort, and strategies for minimising issues concerning group size. The paper also briefly considers strategies for implementing incentives for groupwork members, and outlines the issue of penalties for unproductive group members. The paper concludes by providing recommendations for how to maximise the advantages of groupwork while trying to minimise the disadvantages. Keywords Groupwork Á Assessment Á Free-riding...
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...Introduction Doing teamwork is never easy. Different people of various backgrounds come together, frictions are inevitable and conflicts are bound to happen. In the upcoming surveying studio sessions, we are going to work as a team, either to hold a discussion or to do a group work. Before we get started, just like doing any thing else, we have to have a direction. Therefore, we came up with this report. It presents the possible problems that we may encounter in our future groupwork, and we will also provide solutions to each respective problem. In the followings, the problems identified are categorized into three main parts, namely discussion, working after meeting and general problems. Discussion Meeting is an essential element in collaborative work. Through meetings, team members can share their views and opinions on the groupwork. Members can also know more about the strengths and weaknesses of their partners so as to achieve a better division of labour. Besides, meetings can foster communication and understanding among group members which helps to develop a harmonious team spirit and a sense of belongings. (1) Side-tracking In group discussions, we always come up with discussing topics outside the original themes. The reason why side-tracking occurs in discussion is group members are bored with the original topics. The formal format as well as the atmosphere of the meetings often boresteam members especially after the discussion has been going on for a long period...
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...Critically reflective essay Emma Purnell: 0522771 “Our planning (or worrying about) what’s happening next gives us little opportunity or inclination to examine what has just passed” Wallace (2005) Writing from a student teacher perspective I thought it was very apt to start with the quote above. I believe I, like many student teacher colleagues, spend so much time worrying about what I have to do next, that sometimes I need to have a gentle prod or reminder that I need to be critically reflective of my actions in order to improve my future teaching performance. Sometimes if a session goes wrong I would rather not dwell on it and re-examine why it went wrong as it hurts my pride. However, this would be the easy option and how many times in future situations could I close my eyes and pretend bad experiences hadn’t happened? So regardless of how painful the experience it is vital that we critically reflect on everything we do as teachers, after all we reflect automatically on events in our personal life that we do or don’t want to happen again yet we find it harder to do it in our professional lives. The idea of the need for reflection goes back to the time of Socrates who claimed that the unexamined life was not worth living. More recently however, the idea of reflection in learning was radical in the times of traditional educational institutions. John Dewey as early as the 1930’s wrote and advocated the need for reflection in learning. Dewey, the father of experiential...
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...1 Welcome to Entrepreneurship and Business Dr Kenny Wong Meng Seng ELG 16 wong.mengseng@nottingham.edu.my 2 Entrepreneurship and Business • Core module for all 1st year undergraduate students in NUBS • Also be offered to students from all other schools at the University of Nottingham • Designed to raise student’s awareness and understanding of some of the key elements of entrepreneurial creativity, as well as entrepreneurship in practice. • Many fundamental principles underpinning successful entrepreneurship can be applied in a much wider variety of situations. • Improve their individual skills in terms of creative problem solving and organisational effectiveness. 3 Entrepreneurship and Business Module Sessions • Combination of lectures and mentored group work sessions. Venue: F1A15, on Wednesday in Semester 1, Time: 11:00 – 1:00 pm. • Mentored group work sessions will be held in separate sittings throughout the day in Four sessions specified in the timetable. It will be announced in Week 5. • Students will be asked to self-select their project teams to fit into one of these four sittings, during which they will work through group work in a mentored environment. Groups will not be allowed to change sittings during the course of the module. Course Time Table • Week 2: Wednesday 25th September 2013 – Lecture – – – – Module Introduction and Rationale Course structure and rationale The importance of an integrative learning approach Why study Entrepreneurship...
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...Coming into college I felt as though I didn’t have any flaws. I examined myself personally, I felt good about my ability to do work in classes, and I even was eager when it came to groupwork in the past. But in each of these of these categories I had minor flaws that I didn’t know of, but were fixed throughout my time in my English class. This semester I failed. Now I’m not talking about letter grades or tests, I’m talking about failing in skills I thought I didn’t have problems with. When I started English 1101, one failure I had almost right away was managing...
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...learning: Old approach Passive learners Exam driven Rote-learning Syllabus is content-based and broken down into subjects Textbook bound and teacher centred Syllabus is rigid and non-negotiable Old approach (Continue) Teachers responsible for learning Motivation dependent on personality of lecturer Emphasis on what the teacher hopes to achieve Content placed into rigid time-frames Curriculum development process not open to public comment New Approach Active learners Learners are assessed on an ongoing basis Critical thinking, reasoning, reflection and action An integration of knowledge, learning relevant and connected to real-life situations New Approach (Continue) Learner-centred. Lecturer is facilitator. Lecturer constantly uses groupwork and teamwork Curricula seen as guides that allow lecturers to be innovative and creative Learners take...
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...This is one of the most important topic in Strategy for Managers module where we learn the differences among competing firms to differences in their resources and how they are used strategically (Arend & Lévesque, 2010). Marc valued his team highly during his talk and I think that his unique resources makes Firedrop differ from competitors. I have studied basic mechatronics enough in the past to know that engineering an AI is very difficult, it makes me see through the knowledge and skills the team possesses that contain value, rarity, imitability, and non-substitutability. I felt that Firedrop has a really strong capabilities because I noticed everything they do are based off on the time they spend learning what the customers likes first, as a results it attracts many investors and customers from other...
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...is the cause of activity. Stimulus variation is a way of enhancing children learning by helping them remain attentive.It is a way of maintaining students ' attention. If the teacher talks too long students are bound interests or eye conduct to the teacher.The teacher should reduce talking such that pupils has interest in what they are doing through varying stimulus. A teacher who is able to vary stimulus the lesson become effective as there is high participation in pupils and great achievements of the lesson objectives. Positive results of learners who given a task in a more interesting lesson can perform well and there will be no disciplinary problems. Forms of Stimulus Variation: Vary Methodology :For example demostrations,games ,groupwork ,songs ....
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...English Advanced for Business B Name Zhou Yaping Student number 1323440 Assignment Title Report Lecturer’s Name Dr Tony Shannon-Little BA (Hons) English for International Business Communication Wolverhampton: School of Law, Social Sciences and Communication Contents Executive Summary 1 Terms of Reference 2 Analysis 3 Participation 3 Group work 3 Evaluation of Content 4 Animal texting case 4 My language use & development 5 Recommendations 5 Conclusions 6 References 7 Appendices 8 Appendices 1 8 Appendices 2 10 Appendices 3 12 Executive Summary Firstly, the report analysed participation and group work in two parts. It has expressed that how to be participation in a group and theorises or experiences of group works. Following that, it has discussed evaluation of group study and individual development. These reports recommend that in a group work, people should focus on formal language use, cooperation, communication, information and time and task management. Terms of Reference In this report, it has analysed our group work in this module, also evaluate case of animal testing and personal development of language use. Besides, it gave some recommendations for group work and self-development. It is in order to continue development of our skills and learn the theories or task management with animal testing case. Analysis Participation Participation is important if you...
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...fundamental answer (well, everyone should know a bit about biology, chemistry and physics, much as they should know a bit about history, geography, art and maths) it is a good question. What does science bring to the table? It’s hard to put in specific terms, but science as a concept (as opposed to just learning facts and theories, or heating stuff in test tubes) has some nice ideas to offer that would be useful for many people to learn and would be useful throughout their lives. Concepts such as logical deductions and inference, parsimony, and not accepting arguments (or dismissals) based on authority but from evidence, and scepticism would all be handy. Teaching someone how to appraise and evaluate conflicting evidence and any bias in that evidence would be useful ‘life skills’ for pretty much everyone. Let’s face it, it ultimately comes down to trying to spot patterns, work out reasons for them, and to spot errors and mistake: how can learning these skills be bad or unimportant? Of course many of these are taught in various ways and in subjects well beyond science, (history lessons for me at least included things like looking for bias in various accounts of events), but I do rather like the idea of formally teaching students what it means and why it’s important. I don’t think I was ever taught the...
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...ALTERNATIVE DISPUTE RESOLUTION Alternative Dispute Resolution [Name of the Writer] [Name of the Institution] Table of Contents Introduction 1 Discussion 1 Strengths and weaknesses of the workings of my group 4 Strengths 4 Weaknesses 4 Strengths and weaknesses of my presentation 5 Strengths 5 Weaknesses 5 Overcoming weaknesses 6 Learning about team work and oral presentation skills 6 Conclusion 7 Alternative Dispute Resolution Introduction ADR is a general name that has given to a wide range of procedures that are present for the parties in civil cases to solve their conflicts or disputes before a trial has conducted (Anonymous, 2001, p. 2). There are a lot of ADR concepts like meditation, negotiation/conciliation and arbitration. They are rarely interchangeable. A lot of misconceptions and disputes arises that needs to get solved quickly (Anonymous, 2003, pp. 55-56). Some time it has sorted out without any legal contracts, but sometimes a formal contract is necessary. Discussion As, told in the introduction that Alternative dispute resolution consists of some concepts. Now let’s take a look on them one by one. Arbitration is a process where single, or many independent arbiters invite parties to show arguments and facts. This showed a decision on the basis of equity or law. It is a B2C transaction i.e. business to consumers (Anonymous, 2003, pp. 55-56). Meditation is another concept in ADR which can...
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...topic particularly with regard to war and peace. The children shall know, what happened on Bloody Sunday and they should be able to classify the events into the historical-cultural background.1 1.2. The Song “Sunday, Bloody Sunday by U2” One of the most famous Bands in the World, U2, was founded in 1983. The Single “Sunday, Bloody Sunday” is the reason for the breakthrough of the band. To this day, “Sunday, Bloody Sunday” is considered as one of the most political songs published by them. Even though the strophes of the song describe the view of an observer of Bloody Sunday, the band emphasizes that the song does not merely refer to the events that took place in January 1972: We're into the politics of people, we're not into politics. Like you...
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...Report on the Vocational Area of Childcare Author’s name: Marta Gomez Saavedra Name of department authorising report: The Department of Childcare Date of Submission: 22-1-2015 Circulation List Jane Fitzpatrick Annette Barry Other Teachers in the Department Acknowledgements I wish to thank the following individuals and organisations who helped in the compilation of the report: Jane Fitzpatrick Annette Barry etc Table of contentsPage No Title of report1 Circulation List 2 Acknowledgements 2 Table of Contents3 Terms of Reference4 Method of Procedure4 Findings5 Conclusion Recommendations Appendix Bibliography 1. Terms of Reference “The purpose of this report is to investigate and compile a profile of the vocational area of Childcare under the following headings: Education and training Career opportunities and progression and employment opportunities Challenges Legislation And, choosing one particular career option, to make recommendations on the steps necessary to achieve employment in that chosen career.” 2. Method of Procedure 2.1Research was conducted on the internet 2.2 Prospectuses from third level colleges in Ireland and England were reviewed 2.3 Information seminars organised at the college were attended 2.4 2.5 3. Findings 3.1 Education and Training 3.1.1 Early Childhood Care & Education, Cork College of...
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...MANAGING DIVERSITY The Managerial Implication of an Increasing Diversity in Workforce Author/Student Note:Bong joseph laila ,MBA Student; Frederick Taylor University Moraga CA USA. This Research paper was conducted independently without any funding support nor groupwork;all correspondences should be addressed to josephlaila86@gmail.com. Managing Diversity Abstract Diversity means different things to different organizations.True diversity management articulates and raises performance standards by requiring organizations to learn to recruit, train and support people. Finding ways of working with diverse people involves valueing and utilizing differences as well as finding a common ground for intergrating a mix of people into organizations.This paper shows that organizations more often prefer a more diversified workforce basically because it makes business sense.By maximizing talent,fostering innovation;and tapping into the creativity of a diversified workforce;the altimate result will be increased profits,increase competivity and organizational effectiveness as a whole. Managing Diversity Introduction Between the 1960s and the 1970s management approach layed emphasis on eliminating unfair discrimination through legal compliance for women and ethnic minorities.This was the affirmative action approach which “focuses on achieving equality of opportunity in an organization and...
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...Task 1.1 Draw on the content from module 1 and 2 to conduct a critical analysis of the two job related attitudes: job satisfaction and organisational commitment as they manifest in this case. Work related attitudes are thought of as an important measure of tendencies that an employee may have towards: another person, event, product or process (Marr 2002). The most commonly analysed attitudes at work are: Job satisfaction and organisational commitment. Job satisfaction being the degree to which individuals feel positively or negatively about their work (Wood et al 2013) and can be thought of as an emotional state resulting from a self evaluation of job experiences (Locke 1976) Organisational commitment is the sharing of beliefs and values of an organisation (Meyer & Allen 1991). Hulin (1991) noted considerable overlap between the two attitudes: job satisfaction and organisational commitment, the only difference being their targets, the target of job satisfaction being the satisfaction of one position and the target of organisation commitment being the organisations success (Hulin 1991) In the “Geeks of Chic’ case study there are many work attitudes displayed which indicate different levels of job satisfaction and organisational commitment. Organisational change through the amalgamation, downsizing, remuneration, promotion and hiring processes has been the contributing factor to the varying attitudes and commitment. The local government team is made of 6 people the leader:...
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