Description Charmaine uses a combination of exam and group-work with an individual component. She gives her Knowledge Management students a scenario from a fictional organisation, and they analyse what knowledge there is within the organisation and what gaps exist. The focus of the assignment is on coping with group dynamics and using the correct processes, as well as learning how to produce a business report in an appropriate format, at the right level and with accurate referencing. Learning goals and objectives Charmaine wanted to give the students experience of actually performing the work of a Knowledge Management consultant in an authentic group setting. She'd previously found that many of her students had time management problems and were not submitting assignments on time. She'd also noticed that many of her overseas students were happier and more confident working in groups. Perhaps most importantly, Charmaine designed these assessments to reduce plagiarism. Target audience Students taking the knowledge management course CIS 8017. Currently there are about 70 students taking this course, all of them off campus. Informing students Students are given very detailed written information and instructions, and in order to avoid confusion about levels of participation, groups are kept small and individual contributions to the group are monitored and assessed. Charmaine also defines roles within each group – including leader, time-keeper and scribe – to help them keep on track. Sometimes groups have to be re-drawn after the first assignment – because of absence or withdrawal, for example – and Charmaine is careful at this stage not to break up existing groups and relationships, but to merge existing groups together. Feedback The first assignment is turned around in ten days and the second in fourteen days. This year, for the first time, students' group assignments were posted to an online area that all students were able to view, and Charmaine posted general feedback, highlighting good points of each one and flagging two excellent ones. This system is designed to show students what their peers are producing and to help students understand the expectations of the standard of work. Roles Charmaine enjoys discussing teaching and learning with other people, and when she hears of a good idea she will often try it out. She is always open to new ideas. In this case, she heard about Dawn Birch's use of a mixture of individual and group work, and Charmaine adapted this model so that it would work for her own course and students. Students' personal commitments are one of the issues they are required to negotiate as part of their group work, and group members generally seem to manage that well. Charmaine tries to be flexible with the course requirements when it is necessary – for example, this year there was a student who worked in remote Asian forests and was unable to make a meaningful contribution to group work, and so she adapted the tasks so he could complete them individually. Charmaine says that her own workload has been reduced because she no longer has to deal with multiple requests for extensions or with large numbers of plagiarised assignments. She's been delighted by the standard of the second assignments this semester and has found them a pleasure to mark. Moderation processes Charmaine does all the marking, eliminating the need for moderation between markers, and an internal moderator is in place who can view the assignments and other course materials at any time, as well as taking an overview of the assignments after marking. Results At the time of writing, Charmaine has not yet received formal feedback from the students for this semester. However, the problems with time-management (eg late submissions), have disappeared, and the instances of plagiarism have been reduced almost to zero. Failure rates and drop-out rates have decreased significantly. Informal feedback from students has been very positive, especially about the public posting of the first assignment, as students found the chance to compare their work especially helpful. The second assignment showed significant improvement over the first, indicating that students had used the information they received to develop their work. Problems and advice for others The assessment on this course has evolved to its present structure over a number of years. It took a few tries to get the right mix of assessment procedures, and initially Charmaine had trialled having a larger number of shorter assignments, but whilst this worked for the overseas students, it was unpopular with the Australian ones and she changed it. But over all, Charmaine has found it a very rewarding process. Initially she changed the course with the international students in mind, but she's found that the changes she has made in the assessment procedure benefit all her students. Additional comments Charmaine says that this idea may not work for all courses, but that it's a very useful tool for encouraging time-management, reducing plagiarism and giving students an authentic learning experience. |