Belated post-assessment update. I can certainly recommend this now. Students were
encouraged to engage substantively with the learning process; they wrote thoughtfully
about the work they'd done each week, the plans they were making for the following
week, and crucially reflecting on their contribution and thinking how they could
improve. Mostly they didn't just treat it as box-ticking; mostly they genuinely took
to it as a way of thinking through their role and how they could improve over time.
Actually, I say it was each week; but in the end we (my colleague on this module and
I) decided only to require three entries over the 12 weeks. These were spaced two
weeks apart, in the second half of the module (weeks 6, 8, and 11) - which was when
the group research work actually took place. We still kept the whole thing at 50% of
the grade for the assessment (the other 50% being the group presentation); and, as I
reported in my last email, this continued to prevent concerns about group members not
contributing equally. Students were all able to demonstrate their individual
contributions. And there really didn't seem to be any attempts to claim more work
than they'd done - after all, they did a lot of their work with us in the seminars
each week so we had a good sense of who was doing what. There were the odd explicit
complaints or concerns raised in the journals about particular group members not
doing enough work, but very few - probably because we made it very clear there was no
need to do this as the grade was focused on the individual students' contribution,
regardless of others.
The first two journal entries had the same three questions:
===============================
1. What did you (personally) do this week for the project? Briefly describe any
reading that you did or data you collected, if appropriate.
· What went well?
· What could have gone better? (100 words)
2. What did the other members of your group do this week?
· What went well?
· What could have gone better? (100 words)
3. What are your plans (individually and as a group) for next week? (100 words)
===============================
Then the final one (week 11, just after their presentations) had an additional fourth
question:
===============================
4. Reflect on how your group worked over the last few weeks. You might want to
reflect on whether Belbin’s group roles were reflected in your group.
a. What role did you take?
b. What did you discover about yourself in respect of working in groups and
giving presentations?
c. What skills would you like to improve in yourself? (100 words)
There are no right or wrong answers here (apart from directly blaming people!).
What's important is to demonstrate you have learned from this experience, and worked
out how you might improve in future.
===============================
Accordingly, the final journal entry was weighted a little more heavily (week 6 and 8
were 30 marks; week 11 was 40 marks).
One little mistake we made was to keep the same wording for question 3 (about 'next
week') in week 11, when they'd already finished! Unfortunate oversight on our part.
We managed to explain to them that they could simply ignore that one - and the higher
weighting for the third journal entry still made sense because question 4 was quite a
bit bigger. Naturally we'll tweak that next year.
One other really important thing. I had an interesting and totally unplanned
comparison with a parallel module, which also had a group presentation, but instead
of a learning journal I'd included an 'individual reflective account'. Basically each
group would do their presentation, then at the end of their presentation each
individual group member would explain what they did individually towards the
research; and a section of the grade was reserved for that (as with the learning
journal). This really wasn't anywhere near as effective. Only one group managed to
build in reasonably clear and robust accounts of their individual contributions; most
groups didn't really plan it that carefully, and students' grades dipped on that
section accordingly. So next year, I'm planning to replace that individual reflective
account of the presentation with a learning journal, which I now know works very well.
Hope it works for others too!
Dave
--
Dr. Dave Sayers, ORCID no. 0000-0003-1124-7132
Senior Lecturer, Dept Humanities, Sheffield Hallam University | www.shu.ac.uk
Honorary Research Fellow, Cardiff University & WISERD | www.wiserd.ac.uk
Communications Secretary, BAAL Language Policy group | www.langpol.ac.uk
[log in to unmask] | http://shu.academia.edu/DaveSayers
On 17/11/2017 09:40, Dave Sayers wrote:
> Interim update on these weekly learning diaries/journals: they're going well! The
> original purposes were to enable individual students to demonstrate more
> transparently their individual contributions, while also hopefully encouraging a
> steadier pace of work throughout the project, avoiding a rush job at the end.
>
> It does seem to be achieving both those aims. In previous years there was always
> concern from some project groups that certain group members weren't pulling their
> weight, and that this would affect the grades of those actually doing the work.
> Thankfully it was only ever a small minority each year, but still a problem for those
> affected. The learning journal has palpably calmed those nerves this year! It's
> demonstrably clear to students that they're gaining credit on an individual basis as
> we proceed through the semester, especially since it carries fully half the credit
> for this assessment (not sure it would be as comforting if it had a lower credit
> allocation).
>
> For the second objective, I think it's also helping to steady the pace of work
> throughout the semester. There is a complicating factor in that we have slightly more
> allocated contact time this year, so that might be helping too; but seeing the
> students' entries in the learning journal shows that they're really thinking about
> the trajectory of their research. To that end, I think it's important that for each
> of the three entries I've asked them to discuss what they're doing for the following
> week, as well as what they did so far that week.
>
> Lastly, I think it's pretty much working telling them to couch any negative points in
> a constructive light, articulating these struggles in terms of how they could
> improve, rather than simply bemoaning failures, or worse blaming individual group
> members!
>
> I'll update again once the assessment is finished, but so far so good!
>
> Dave
>
> --
> Dr. Dave Sayers, ORCID no. 0000-0003-1124-7132
> Senior Lecturer, Dept Humanities, Sheffield Hallam University | www.shu.ac.uk
> Honorary Research Fellow, Cardiff University & WISERD | www.wiserd.ac.uk
> Communications Secretary, BAAL Language Policy group | www.langpol.ac.uk
> [log in to unmask] | http://shu.academia.edu/DaveSayers
>
>
> On 15/05/2017 15:22, Kuha, Mai wrote:
>> I also do pretty much what Manel describes, and I¹d say often about 3
>> minutes per entry is enough. I complete a simple rubric in our online
>> learning management system; since that explains the grade to the student,
>> usually I just write a short comment. Many entries either fit into common
>> patterns or (unfortunately) are short and not very substantial, so those
>> are quick to grade. Then there is handful in which the student really
>> grapples with some experience or demonstrates that some linguistic concept
>> is not understood, so then it takes longer to craft a response or perhaps
>> even modify plans for the next class meeting to convey something more
>> clearly but I find that spending time on this is totally worth it.
>>
>> By the way, I used to get complaints about this course requirement,
>> apparently because students have set expectations for what kind of thing a
>> ³journal² is; this label suggests to them less rigorous writing, so having
>> to be analytical and integrate ideas from what they have read seemed
>> unreasonable to them. I changed the name to ³field notes² and it is going
>> over a lot better now:)
>>
>> Back to Dave¹s original question, a learning diary sounds intriguing, and
>> I look forward to hearing how it works out for you if you implement it. A
>> possible risk is that students may perceive it as being separate from the
>> work they need to complete for the project itself, and therefore
>> unnecessary.
>>
>> Mai
>> -- Mai Kuha Department of English Ball State University Muncie, Indiana, USA On
>> 5/15/17, 7:12 AM, "Rebecca Wheeler" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>> And what amount of grading load do y'all experience with your teaching
>>> journals? How many students in the class? I love these ideas, but am
>>> shuddering to think of such entries for my 70 students across two
>>> sections.
>>>
>>> Thx,
>>> Rebecca
>>>
>>> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>>> Rebecca S. Wheeler, PhD
>>> Professor of English
>>> Fulbright Scholar, Tajikistan - 2016
>>>
>>> Department of English
>>> Christopher Newport University
>>> Newport News, VA 23606
>>>
>>> office: 757-594-8889
>>> cell: 757-651-3659
>>> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>>>
>>>> On May 15, 2017, at 04:35, Manel Herat<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> We do a Language Journal at Liverpool Hope but this is an individual
>>>> assignment and what students have to do is to find a real life
>>>> situation that they have encountered that relates to what they have
>>>> learnt on the course and apply one of the theories to discuss the
>>>> situation. They have to do this every week but they're only assessed
>>>> on 4 journal entries. Each week they get the opportunity to discuss
>>>> their entries during seminar time and to think about whether they have
>>>> used an appropriate theory. The journal entry is in two parts; first
>>>> they have to describe the situation and secondly, they have to analyse
>>>> the situation using an appropriate theory. They are allowed to write
>>>> as much as they want for the situation, the analysis however, has to
>>>> be 500 words. Hope this helps.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Manel
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Sent from my iPad
>>>>
>>>>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>>>
>>>>> Date: Sun, 14 May 2017 15:40:20 +0100
>>>>> From: Dave Sayers<[log in to unmask]>
>>>>> Subject: weekly learning diaries
>>>>>
>>>>> Hi folks,
>>>>>
>>>>> Does anyone have any experience of using these? I'm thinking about
>>>>> this as a possible
>>>>> accompaniment to a group project in a first year module. It would
>>>>> enable individual
>>>>> students to demonstrate more transparently their individual
>>>>> contributions, while also
>>>>> hopefully encouraging a steadier pace of work throughout the project,
>>>>> avoiding a rush
>>>>> job at the end. They would be formally graded as part of the overall
>>>>> assessment.
>>>>>
>>>>> Concerns include:
>>>>> - What weighting should this receive, relative to the group project?
>>>>> - How difficult/labour intensive would this be to assess each week?
>>>>> - How susceptible is it to gaming/faking?
>>>>> - Might it work against the group ethos if they're having to write
>>>>> individually all
>>>>> the way through the project?
>>>>>
>>>>> And so on. Anyone's experiences - positive, negative, whatever - very
>>>>> much appreciated!
>>>>>
>>>>> Thanks,
>>>>> Dave
>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>> Dr. Dave Sayers, ORCID no. 0000-0003-1124-7132
>>>>> Senior Lecturer, Dept Humanities, Sheffield Hallam University |
>>>>> www.shu.ac.uk
>>>>> Honorary Research Fellow, Cardiff University & WISERD |
>>>>> www.wiserd.ac.uk
>>>>> [log in to unmask] |http://shu.academia.edu/DaveSayers
>>>>>
>>>>> ------------------------------
>>>>>
>>>>>
|
