GROUP WORK AND ASSESSMENT

Group assessment brings its own problems and joys. The project on group blogging, with my colleague Jenny Nicholls, has been really successful. The third year drama students have enjoyed the task and the medium, and used the blogging space to move forward their ideas about playbuilding each week. Students worked on the blogs collaboratively out of class each week, and workshopped ideas together, face-to-face, in class time. And given that it’s much harder for students to successfully organise group tasks (like everyone else, they have very busy lives), the blogs helped with time management and building group identity. Now for the marking! And to see how the workload goes, and whether the students adhered to the guidelines which asked them to refer to the literature and reflect on the whole process.


GROUP WORK AND ASSESSMENT RESOURCES

Here are some great resources if you want to know more about group work and how to manage it.

Doing Group Assessment in Media and Communication
http://creative.canberra.edu.au/groupwork/Intro/Frameset.html
This site contains case studies, videos and text-based learning design information about group assessments. Issues such as group management, feedback, peer assessment and supporting technologies are addressed. There are keynote video interviews with Professors Sharon Bell, Ron Oliver, Tom Reeves, Jan Herrington and John Hedberg. The consortium responsible includes: the School of Creative Communication, University of Canberra (lead institution), School of Media Film & Theatre and College of Fine Arts, University of NSW, ICT Innovations Centre, Macquarie University and the School of Design, University of Technology Sydney.

Good practice: Assessment: Part B. Implementing assessment
http://www.uow.edu.au/about/teaching/goodpractice/UOW008515.html
This is a clearly laid out resource from the University of Wollongong.

Assessing Group Work
http://www.cshe.unimelb.edu.au/assessinglearning/03/group.html
Again, another high quality resource. It has been developed by the Centre for the Study of Higher Education at the University of Melbourne. There's an accompanying PowerPoint presentation worth viewing.