I was a little nervous about the Ed-camp when it was first announced.  I didn’t really understand the structure and there is something about not having the anonymity of sitting in a big lecture hall that made me uneasy.  Luckily, for me at least, it ended up being really informative.  It was nice to be able to talk to a bunch of students from different schools about their perspectives and to get to talk a little bit with people who had a little more expertise.

 

I spent most of my time in the room discussing how to use group work effectively, which was actually the topic I put forth in the google doc! I felt like we had been talking quite negatively about group work, especially in that big meeting with both cohorts and the professors.  I figured that there must be some reason that we assign group work beyond the convenience of having less to mark as a teacher and while I had my ideas about why we use it, it was really nice to have some other perspectives on it from other people.

 

We talked about group work from the perspective of a student and from the perspectives of future teachers.  Most of us in the group agreed that we had been the kind of students to just shoulder the extra work when one student wasn’t pulling their weight and that brought us to a question about what to do as teachers to prevent that from happening.  We also talked about how to assess group work in ways that were not entirely reliant on the whole group.  Should students receive an individual grade and a group grade?  And if so, how should each segment be weighted?  We ended up settling on some kind of peer evaluation system that would allow students to comment honestly on the dynamics of the group as well as making sure to provide in-class work time so that, as a teacher, we would be able to observe how their group works together for ourselves.

 

We also talked a little about whether it’s better to allow students in high school to make their own groups or whether groups should be assigned to them.  The concern around allowing students to make their own groups is, of course, that some students who, perhaps, did not have any friends in the class or were less outgoing would have a difficult time asking to be included.  The issue with assigning groups is that it may make it difficult for less outgoing students to share their ideas if they aren’t with someone they feel comfortable with.  We didn’t really come to a concrete answer on this question but one of the suggestions was if you were making groups of four, to have students pair up and then put the pairs together in groups of four.  That way each student would have one person they feel comfortable with but they wouldn’t have the pressure of having to make a group of four.  Still, there are many things to consider with this solution.

 

As far as tools for monitoring group work go, we had someone introduce a product called Enlighten which, for looking through their webpage, works a little like Trello.  It allows you to categorize tasks and check them off when they are complete.  I hadn’t really thought about using those platforms to monitor group work but I think having each student have their own individual task list within a group Trello board or Enlighten board could be something that’s really helpful for ensuring that the tasks are distributed as evenly as possible.

 

I’m really glad that I got a chance to participate in this Ed-camp and I would definitely like to participate in something like this again!