Assessing Small Group Cooperative Learning
This is one aspect of the BIGs program where many of the faculty feel they were unsure that they were adequately assessing the effectiveness of cooperative learning. Few faculty members have expertise in this kind of assessment, since most instructors teach in lecture-based courses, or seminar-based courses. One BIGs faculty member commented that to obtain assessment data on cooperative learning in the BIGs classroom, it might be necessary to enlist some outside help; possibly a graduate student who is closely aligned with the instructor and can observe and collect the necessary data. Another option is to use rubrics and engage the students in self-assessment of their group work, and ask the students to identify what elements worked to create good teamwork.
From a practical standpoint, assessing small group cooperative learning in the BIGs program was achieved through pre and post evaluations, which addressed student attitudes toward teamwork. The same assessment was used across all BIGs seminar courses. Additionally, in each of the individual BIGs instructors provided end-of case evaluations, which required students to complete peer and self-assessment of group work. The primary goal of this latter evaluation was to allow students to reflect on their contributions to the team.
“The small groups were all effective even when they weren’t effective because part of what we did was have students evaluate their small group after each exercise, so after each case. The format for the semester was as follows; there were about 5-6 small group exercises, the class consisted of about 22 students, so there were small groups of 4-5 students and those got randomly redistributed over the course of the semester. My intent was that everyone would be in a small group with everyone else once (but some actually overlapped more than once), but everyone was in a group with everyone else at least once. After each case exercise each student emailed me and gave a grade to every member of their group and to themselves, – and they had to provide reasons for their evaluations of each other. Most of the time everyone got an A, but not always, several people identified themselves or others as less than an A. I think the lowest was a C. So this enabled reflection upon one’s contribution and that of others, so in individual cases where the personality dynamic did not work or individuals did not put forth a good effort, these things were identified and reflected upon, so there was always some value to all of the group’s interactions. And maybe the most value for the students was when the group did not work out.” -Jon Woods
Several organizations are dedicated to the theory and practice of cooperative learning and maintain websites that are extremely helpful. Three of these are indicated below:
Foundation coalition: Active/Cooperative Learning – Best practices in Engineering Education: http://clte.asu.edu/active/main.htm
Team based learning: www.teambasedlearning.org
Richard Felder’s homepage: http://www.ncsu.edu/effective_teaching/Cooperative_Learning.html
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