Thursday, December 25, 2014

Do you have examples of questions to ask for a status report on group work?I am a teacher who uses group work. I am trying to create a list of...

Reading these two statements together, it looks as though you want to ask questions to be sure groups are on task and you also want to feedback from each student on his or her experience within the group. 


I do not know if you assign "roles" in groups, for example, the researcher, the scrivener, etc., but I would be inclined to make one student responsible for accumulating information for a status report.  If you have deadlines built in, then between three and five days before a deadline, one sheet of paper listing the tasks to be accomplished for each person could be circulated by the responsible group member.  This is probably sufficient time to get a group back on task again.


The kind of questions one asks to get a reading from individual students is quite different, of course.  You need to ask yourself what you hope to learn from student responses.  I think asking questions that could elicit criticism of other group members is likely to be a mistake.  You might ask what the student has learned about group interaction or how tasks might be better allocated in a group project.  You could ask whether the scheduling was realistic. You might ask students what kinds of projects would be better as group projects in the world outside of school and what kinds of projects are best served through individual endeavor.  I would tend to focus more on the dynamics and process than on individual performance in any questionnaire of this sort. You want the student to do some critical thinking, not some destructive criticizing. 


I hope this helps! I have had totally successful groups and those who were staggeringly dysfunctional.  I wish you the former, of course. 

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