Hiya folks. I thought this Cafe looked really interesting. Lots of us assign collaborative projects in our classes, so I thought other people might be interested, too. Marcy =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Marcy Bauman Writing Program University of Michigan-Dearborn 4901 Evergreen Rd. Dearborn, MI 48128 Web page: http://www.umd.umich.edu/~marcyb email: [log in to unmask] =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 3 Sep 1996 01:05:11 -0400 From: Tari Fanderclai <[log in to unmask]> To: Multiple recipients of list RHETNT-L <[log in to unmask]> Subject: Invitation to Netoric's Tuesday Cafe Discussion, 9/3/96 ************************************************************* Please come to Netoric's Tuesday Cafe Discussion for September 3, 1996 8:00 p.m. EDT in Netoric's Tuesday Cafe on MediaMOO Topic: Collaborative Projects: Valuable Learning Experiences, or Useless Pains in Students' Butts? To join us: Telnet to MediaMOO at purple-crayon.media.mit.edu 8888 connect guest OR connect your character if you have one @go Tuesday If you're new to Netoric and/or MOOing, Netoric's Information and MOOhelpsheet is available from Netoric's Home Page: http://www.cs.bsu.edu/homepages/siering/netoric.html Netoric's home page also has logs of Netoric events! ************************************************************** Okay, this is a tad long, but think of it as reading a 120-line article in preparation for this week's cafe... Lately I (Tari) have been thinking a lot about collaboration in writing classes. It all started (well, this time) a few weeks ago over dinner with some friends, several of whom were at the time taking a summer writing course. (Just to be thorough about describing my admittedly-skewed survey group, they were mostly 20-25 year-old exceptionally-bright computer science students.) They'd been assigned a group writing project and were ranting Ranting RANTING about how they hate collaborative projects. I explained some of the theories behind using group work in writing classes, and they agreed that they were very nice theories, but in practice they weren't buying. So I asked them about group work in general, not just in their writing classes, and as we continued the discussion off and on over the next few weeks, I came up with a list of their complaints, the most-often repeated of which I'll list here (many of these aren't new, but what I find significant is that they were adamant that teachers are kidding themselves if they think they ever have overcome or can overcome these problems). I'll try to list just "data" and avoid interpretation--we'll interpret at the cafe. ---Most of them viewed a group project as a situation in which they end up working *around* rather than with a group of people. As one of them put it, "I end up taking over the project because otherwise I think it won't get done right." ---One of them said he really hated being placed in a group with people of varying ability levels. I asked about playing on the strengths of the various group members and learning from each other, and he said that students don't know how to do that, and even if the teacher tries to encourage learning from each other, there isn't enough time to become a group that can really work as a team AND get the project done, so you end up right back at the "whoever most wants the thing to get done right takes over" problem. ---All of these people described group projects as "really inconvenient" even when they had group members they were satisfied could do a good job. They thought they could learn more and do a better job working alone than "wasting time" on trying to find a time and place to get together and figuring out how to get things done and so forth. ---I asked them about the value of the projects they're usually assigned in collaborative groups. They said that in most cases they thought the projects were valuable but there wasn't anything about them that warranted doing them in groups. I got a couple of them to admit that they'd learned a couple of things from people in groups they'd worked with, but they said they ask each other questions anyhow and they didn't need to be in a group about it. ---One person complained about a particular group in which he'd been assigned to work with two goof-offs, plus his roommate, "who I'd have worked with anyway." After talking about this for awhile, he said he and his roommate often work together by reading each other's papers and commenting on each other's projects and so forth, but that's different because they know each other well and know how to work together and what they can learn from each other. He concluded that some kinds of collaboration help him learn, but that "forced" collaboration with random classmates didn't do anything for him, even when he got some say in picking his group members. ---They weren't buying any arguments about simulating the working environment. (I should mention that their university has a co-op program--every other term, instead of taking classes, they go to work at a job related to their field--so they're in some position to know what their future workplaces will be like.) They said that when you work on a collaborative project at work, you don't have to worry about when and where to meet; you don't have to try to figure out who can do what because each person was placed on the team to fulfill a specific role; you generally have a mutual interest in getting the project done right; it's clear that there's a need for whatever you're producing; you don't have the feeling that you could or should have done the whole thing yourself. ---They didn't seem to care how the evaluation of a project was done, though the two who'd been asked to evaluate group members' performances said they didn't like it. As near as I could figure out, they thought most students didn't have enough practice in evaluating other people's performances, and ended up writing evaluations that were too sparse and tentative to be useful. I asked what should be graded, and they seemed to prefer having the product graded. It seemed like they felt that then they had control over the grade because they could make sure the product was good even if they had to do it all themselves. They didn't really bring up grades till I asked about them, though; their complaints were more along the lines of "this project is wasting my time." So there you have some of the perceptions of a few Good Students about collaborative/group work. Yes, it's a small, idiosyncratic sample; yet it seems to me that if any students were going to understand this business of collaboration and learning experiences and all of that, these people would. After all, they're the same people that roll their eyes and talk about this great discussion this or that professor was about to get into in response to one of their questions, only to be cut off by "some idiot who isn't interested in learning anything who raised his hand and asked if this would be on the test." At this week's cafe, let's consider the above objections to collaborative projects. Let's think about the collaborative projects we typically assign and the ways we think they're valuable to students. Let's talk about the ways we believe our students are reacting to/learning from collaborative projects, and let's wonder whether we're seeing what we hope to see while they're really out ranting at their friends about the futility of group projects. Can we design collaborative projects that really work? Should we abandon the "project" idea and try to foster collaboration some other way? When is collaboration useless? See you at the cafe! * * * N E T O R I C * * * Tuesday Cafe -- Electronic Conferences -- CMC Workshops --------------------------------------------------------------- | Tari Fanderclai | Greg Siering | | Boston, MA | Ball State University | | [log in to unmask] | [log in to unmask] | ---------------------------------------------------------------