Writing & Evaluating Group Papers
CAC | Citizenship Workshop, 16 October 2013
Discussion Questions for Collaborative Writing
v What strategies are we already using to support group writing?
v What resources do we need to improve current strategies or develop new strategies?
v What steps need to be taken to make these improvements?
v What are day-to-day activities we can use to improve this quality?
v What large-scale changes can we make to improve this quality?
How can we help students write group papers?
Ø Ask them to talk about their own strengths and weaknesses as writers before they start
o What's your previous experience with the topic?
o What do you understand best from class? What are you struggling with?
o Do you have any outside experience (job, internships, previous classes) relevant to the topic and/or class?
o What's your experience with the kind of research we're doing (field, library, etc.)
o What kinds of papers do you write best? What have teachers and others complimented you on?
o What problems do you have in writing?
Ø Assign each group member a particular role
o Discussion Leader, Scheduler, Note-Taker, etc.
Ø When assigning groups, consider students’ schedules, strengths/weaknesses, commitment to the course/project, and diversity
Ø Use Doodle or other online scheduling tools to set up meetings
Ø Use Google Drive or other online collaborative writing tools
Ø Give them in-class time to write together—and to get to know each other
o Bonding time increases the odds that the students will work well together
o It is particularly important for students to meet face-to-face at the very beginning and very end
§ Make sure students have a coherent plan, a thesis, an outline, etc, before divvying up tasks to complete individually, so everyone is on the same page with the “big picture”
§ Make sure students have ample time to revise and edit the final draft together, so that the final product is coherent and unified
Ø Give more time to write, and scaffold more steps and mini-deadlines along the way
Ø Ask students to create a group contract, which includes expectations for members, consequences of missed meetings or deadlines, and processes for member dismissal
Ø Talk with students about common pitfalls and how to avoid them
o EX: “Common Pitfalls of Collaborative Writing” (attached)
Ø Make sure your assignment is one that can be done better in a group than alone
o EX: Papers that include multiple perspectives can be completed better in a group. Tell students that productive conflict or disagreement is good—and they might want to include it in their paper.
o EX: “Writing Tasks Suited to Group Work” (attached)
Ø Practice writing something together as an entire class to model best practices
o EX: “Charette” (attached)
Ø Include in-class group workshops
o EX: Repeating, Believing, Doubting Workshop: describe your project to another team; then, they repeat back what they heard, ask “believing” questions, and ask “doubting” questions to help clarify or develop your ideas
o EX: Elevator Pitch Workshop: Each group member gets 30 seconds to describe the project—hopefully improving with each version. Then, the listening group asks questions.
How can we evaluate group papers?
Ø Ask students how they want to be evaluated (group contract)
Ø Include both an individual and team grade—and the balance should reflect your course goals
Ø Make a peer evaluation form and a self evaluation form—or let students make them
Ø Give students X number of total points for their final grade, and let them decide how to divvy them up
Student Assessment of Group Product
From Winchester-Seeto, T. (April, 2002). Assessment of collaborative work – collaboration versus assessment. Invited paper presented at the AnnualUniserve Science Symposium, The University of Sydney
Assessment Option
/Advantages
/Disadvantages
Student distribution of pool of marks
Instructor awards a set number of scores and let the group decide how to distribute them.Example: 4 member group
· Product grade: 80/100.· 4 * 80 = 320 pts to be distributed.
· No one student can be given less than zero or more than 100. If members decide that they all contributed equally then each get 80. If they decided that person A deserved much more, then A might get 95, and the remaining if equal would get 75. / v easy to implement
v may motivate students to contribute more
v negotiation skills become part of the learning process
v potential to reward outstanding performance
v may be perceived as fairer than shared or average group mark alone / v open to subjective evaluation by friends
v may lead to conflict
v may foster competition and therefore be counterproductive to team work
v students may not have the skills necessary for the required negotiation
Students allocate individual weightings
Instructor gives shared group grade & individual grade adjusted according to a peer assessment factor.Example
· Group Grade = 80/100· The individual student's peer grade ranges from .5 – 1.5, with 1 for full
· Grade = Group grade * peer
· Below=80 *.75 =60 Above=80 * 1.2 = 96 /
As Above
/As Above
Peer Evaluation - random marker, using criteria, moderated
Assessment items are anonymously completed by students who identify whether their peer has met the assessment criteria and awards a grade These grades are moderated by instructor and rating sheets returned to student.
/ v helps clarify criteria for assessmentv encourages sense of involvement and responsibility
v assists students to develop skills in independent judgment
v increases feedback to students
v random allocation addresses potential friendship and other influences on assessment
v provides experience to careers where peer judgment occurs / v time may have to be invested in teaching students to evaluate each other
v instructor moderation is time consuming
Common PITFALLS of Collaborative writing (UNC Chapel Hill)
1. Immediately dividing the writing into pieces.While this may initially seem to be the best way to approach a group writing process, it can also generate more work later on, when the parts written separately must be put together into a unified document. The different pieces must first be edited to generate a logical flow of ideas, without repetition. Once the pieces have been stuck together, the entire paper must be edited to eliminate differences in style and any inconsistencies between the individual authors’ various chunks. Thus, while it may take more time up-front to write together, in the end a closer collaboration can save you from the difficulties of combining pieces of writing and may create a stronger, more cohesive document.
2. Procrastination.Although this is solid advice for any project, it is even more essential to start working on group projects in a timely manner. In group writing, there are more people to help with the work-but there are also multiple schedules to juggle and more opinions to seek.
3. Being a solo group member.Not everyone enjoys working in groups. You may truly desire to go solo on this project, and you may even be capable of doing a great job on your own. However, if this is a group assignment, then the prompt is asking for everyone to participate. If you are feeling the need to take over everything, try discussing expectations with your fellow group members as well as the teaching assistant or professor. However, always address your concerns with group members first. Try to approach the group project as a learning experiment: you are learning not only about the project material but also about how to motivate others and work together.
4. Waiting for other group members to do all of the work. If this is a project for a class, you are leaving your grade in the control of others. Leaving the work to everyone else is not fair to your group mates. And in the end, if you do not contribute, then you are taking credit for work that you did not do; this is a form of academic dishonesty. To ensure that you can do your share, try to volunteer early for a portion of the work that you are interested in or feel you can manage.
5. Leaving all the end work to one person.It may be tempting to leave all merging, editing, and/or presentation work to one person. Be careful. There are several reasons why this may be ill-advised. 1) The editor/presenter may not completely understand every idea, sentence, or word that another author wrote, leading to ambiguity or even mistakes in the end paper or presentation. 2) Editing is tough, time-consuming work. The editor often finds himself or herself doing more work than was expected as he or she tries to decipher and merge the original contributions under the time pressure of an approaching deadline. If you decide to follow this path and have one person combine the separate writings of many people, be sure to leave plenty of time for a final review by all of the writers. Ask the editor to send out the final draft of the completed work to each of the authors and let every contributor review and respond to the final product. Ideally, there should also be a test run of any live presentations that the group or a representative may make.
6. Entirely negative critiques.When givingfeedbackor commenting on the work of other group members, focusing only on “problems” can be overwhelming and put your colleagues on the defensive. Try to highlight the positive parts of the project in addition to pointing out things that need work. Remember that this is constructive feedback, so don’t forget to add concrete, specific suggestions on how to proceed. It can also be helpful to remind yourself that many of your comments are your own opinions or reactions, not absolute, unquestionable truths, and then phrase what you say accordingly. It is much easier and more helpful to hear “I had trouble understanding this paragraph because I couldn’t see how it tied back to our main argument” than to hear “this paragraph is unclear and irrelevant.”
Writing Tasks Suited to Group Work (Colorado State)
Papers Requiring "Original" Research: Whenever you have a paper that requires you to observe things, interview other experts, conduct surveys, or do any other kind of "field" research, having more than one person to divide these tasks among allows you to write a more thoroughly researched paper. Also, because these kinds of sources are frequently hard to "make sense" of, having more than one perspective on what you find is a great help in deciding how to use the information in a paper. For example, having more than one person observe the same thing frequently gives you two different perspectives on what happened.
Papers Requiring Library Research: Although most of us might be satisfied with two or three sources in a research paper using written sources, instructors usually expect more. Working with multiple people allows you to break up library tasks more easily and do a more thorough search for relevant material. For example, one person can check Internet sources, another might have to check a certain database in the library (like SAGE) while another works on a different database more specific to your topic (e.g. ERIC for education, MLA for literature, etc.). Also, the diversity of perspectives in a group helps you decide which sources are most relevant for your argument and audience.
Any Type of Argument: Arguments, by their very nature, involve having a good sense of audience, including audiences that may not agree with you. Imagining all the possible reactions to your audience is a difficult task with these types of papers. The diversity of perspectives and experiences of multiple people are a great advantage here. This is particularly true of "public" issues which affect many people because it is easy to assume your perspective on what the public thinks is "right" as opposed to being subject to your own, limited experience. This is equally true of more "academic" arguments because each member of a group might have a different sense, depending on their past course work and field experience, of what a disciplinary audience is expecting and what has already been said about a topic.
Interpretations: Apaper that requires some type of interpretation--of literature, a design structure, a piece of art, etc.--always includes various perspectives, whether it be the historical perspective of the piece, the context of the city in which a landscape is designed, or the perspective of the interpreter. Given how important perspective is to this type of writing and thinking, reviewing or interpreting work from a variety of perspectives helps strengthen these papers. Such variety is a normal part of group work but much harder to get at individually.
Cultural Analyses: Any analysis of something cultural, whether it be from an anthropological perspective, a political science view of a public issue, or an analysis of a popular film, involves a "reading" or interpretation of the culture's context as well. However, context is never simply one thing and can be "read", much like a poem, in many ways. Having a variety of "eyes" to analyze a cultural scene, then, gives your group an advantage over single-authored papers that may be more limited.
Lab/Field Reports: Any type of experiment or field research involving observation and/or interpretation of data can benefit from multiple participants. More observers help lessen the work load and provide more data from a single observation which can lead to better, or even more objective, interpretations. For these reasons, much work in science is collaborative.
Any Type of Evaluation: An evaluation paper, such as reviews, critiques, or case reports, implies the ability to make and defend a judgment. judgments, as we all know, can be very idiosyncratic when only one person interprets the data or object at hand. As a result, performing an evaluation in a group allows you to gain multiple perspectives, challenge each other's ideas and assumptions, and thus defend a judgment that may not be as subject to bias.
CHARRETTE: an exercise in collaborative writing