Activities, assignments and assessment/In-class team assessment
Sherrie Wentworth and Di Hughes' presentation for AAAOpenConf2013
Sherrie Wentworth and Di Hughes have been developing in-class team assessment in the Common First Year subject Human Biosciences (Anatony). They're building on an inquiry theme. The teams prepare two team reports through the subject, both of which are completed in a workshop. Each report is worth 13% of their final mark, and requires each team to work together during the workshops in the weeks leading up to the final workshop and then contribute their ideas to the final report. This helps to eliminate the “parceling out” of parts of the report when reports were done outside of class hours. They found that while students did very well on the team report – a question based on exactly the same material in the exam was poorly done as each team member hadn't worked on all parts of the report.
Notes
editCFY subject Human Biosciences B - 2nd semester subject. These are two of the hardest subjects in first year and prerequisite for many subjects in 2nd year. HBB does quizzes too. How we tackle team assessments is the focus of the presentation.
Initially, Human Biosciences B was an EBL subject with team based learning activities. Each enquiry lasts 4 weeks. There is a lot of assessment in each enquiry including a team report. Students tended to allocate tasks and discussion in the team to ensure everyone was happy with and understood it - but this is where it didn't work. Compared team assessment and individual exam marks - NO CORRELATION. (1126 students analysed.) Students working well in teams and got good marks but not picking up information other team members had done, so didn't do well in individual exams. 2010 changed slightly - decrease in team marks; increased time to do teamwork in 2011 and this led to improvement. In 2012 changed again slightly - better links between what students learnt and the assessment tasks. Now manage assessment process in the classroom which works much better,replaced team assignments with in-class activities. Introducing "fun" activities too in team based activities.
Nil correlation between team project result, and final (individual) exam result. (Now there's a scatter plot for you!). Decrease in team marks (and later, time) led to an improvement in this correlation. Improving links between their (new) assessment and what they already know ... Then, assessment done in class, rather than @ home ...
Threshold concepts in 2nd year: a 'window' where this particular knowledge needs to be gathered before the clinical subjects.
"Cohort size limits creativity in assessment"