3.3 Assessment for improving collaborative learning by EUN Partnership aisbl

Sonja, Nis, Serbia

ssumonja — 2016-11-07 11:24:30 UTC

Collaborative learning encourages students because they can have better achievements (the atmosphere is more relaxed, students can show their full capacity for learning).
*Collaborative writing task-team work.

Stella Maris Berdaxagar from Argentina

2016-11-07 11:31:49 UTC

Assessment of collaborative work may discourage students or encourage competition. It largely depends on personal traits, team dynamics , prior experiences ,etc. It is our task as teachers to foster collaboration through P2P proactive interactions. There is a need for team awareness to support learning. Summative assessment of each student in our school and ESL classes consider the learning process and the outcomes to make adjustments, improve performances for remediation , reinforcement or advancement. Learning is in progress and , as such , it provides opportunities for everyone beyond schedules.

Grazia Paladino,Italy

graziampl — 2016-11-07 11:55:40 UTC

I think assessment during and at the end of the collaborative work will discourage students and encourage competitiveness, but only if you, as a teacher, has not been very clear about the organization, objectives and evaluation of collaborative activities. , Before starting to collaborative learning is necessary to clarify the methods of assessment, providing the self-assessment checklist. This so that everyone knows what the teachers a ask and what will be the assessment focus. Besides I think that to assign, in a clear way, roles within a group can make clear what one should do and individual responsibility

Arnaud Perrier, France

2016-11-07 12:13:01 UTC

To my mind, it is true that sometimes the assessments lead to a competition between students. But sometimes they are also a source of emulation for some. And it's this emulation that allows them to move forward. However, it is only visible for students who are doing right, not for students who are struggling and who may get discouraged quickly. To avoid this, we should do group assessments rather than individual assessments. Similarly, it is necessary that these assessments are more about a procedure, a competence than a final product.

A. Leen

annetteleen — 2016-11-07 12:19:02 UTC

Summative assessment doesn't take into account various project work etc in some subjects in Ireland although there are some where project work is allocated a % of the overall mark e.g. Home Economics and Link Modules

Jasna Šojer/Croatia

jasna_sojer — 2016-11-07 12:23:31 UTC

I believe that teacher assesment of collaborative work doesn't have to encourage competition. It depends how it is presented. I prefer to stress the way how studentsh elped each other during their work on the task . In my school collaborative work in projects is not taken into account. Usually I ask colleagues to award students for working in project. I would like to stress that 4 projects we had got European QL, and one national award, so the students did a really good job.

Angela C. Italy

angelacaruso — 2016-11-07 12:36:08 UTC

The experience of collaborative learning brings also benefits to the assessment, thus obtaining successful learning is shared with the whole group. In my school the summative assessment for each student takes into account the learning outcomes related to projects works.

Elisabetta - SA

anicia1 — 2016-11-07 12:43:25 UTC

I think assessment is a fundamental part of the learning and growing process. If it is true that we are trying to teach students to be able to live in the society and to equip them with better tools and skills, we can't avoid assessment as if forms part of everyone's everyday life. A positive way to address a topic that for so long has been synonym of frustration and demotivation, might be to start with creating a positive vibe in class; start with short and very structured tasks that can be completed also by week students; do not proceed to unstructured tasks until students have acquired the willingness and the capacity to work together. I personally think that assessing the group and the single student might minimize competitiveness. Which is, however, not a bad thing itself.

Francesca

francesca_lombardi1973 — 2016-11-07 12:43:25 UTC

Obviously when the feedbacks are predominately negative, especially with marks or grades, that it discourage student effort and achievement. Some students need to be nudged to achieve at a higher level and other needs to be handled very gently so as not to discourage learning and damage self-esteem. A balance between not wanting to hurt a student’s feelings and providing proper encouragement is essential. Unfortunately the summative assessment of each student in my school doesn’t take yet into account the learning outcomes related to a collaborative work, such as project work/results.

Cristina Fuertes, Spain

2016-11-07 12:50:52 UTC

By sure, our assessment can discourage students or encourages them to do better. It is difficult, but probably one option can be interchange groups.
For any tasks the students do they need feedback, sometimes can be only telling them they are working in a proper way. The summative assessment values everything the process work, the work and the results.

Julia, Poutugal

2016-11-07 12:55:03 UTC

I believe in team work assessment, there are two aspects: the final product and the individual participation over time, that is, the communication, the involvement, the
responsibility and execution of tasks outlined. And they are correlated.

Elvia/ Italy

2016-11-07 13:51:40 UTC

I don't think that the assessment of collaborative work can discourage students if they know, in advance, what and how their work will be evaluated. In my class, teachers take into account the learning outcomes of the collaborative work, in fact any project result gets a final mark.

Maria Daniela Roberto

2016-11-07 14:21:45 UTC

I think when the assessment is shared and agreed upon withthe class, when each student knows what to do and what will beevaluated, this can contribute even more to enhance learning.Assessment in collaborative learning, must take account of teamspirit, the true collaboration of each educational action. Is itright to strike a balance even in the negative judgement, so thatthe pupils do not lose heart and are even more motivated tolearn.

Roberta Scarselli

2016-11-07 14:27:53 UTC

Italy
I think that self formative assessment is very important to promote collaboration, competences and it is a good base to learning. that's why I think it suatains summative assessment and learning. When a group of students learn to self-regulate themselves and get to know what is expected from them and why, learning is facilitated.
Metacognition, in my opinion, is also very important and it should be at the base of self assessment. learning to reflect and think continually about the process of learning, for example asking themselves why they should behave in a certain way, what is more useful for them in order to achieve some goal...and so on

Vasso Lalakidou, Greece

lalakidou — 2016-11-07 14:28:13 UTC

I believe that the basic problem in collaborative work is a suitable role for each student. For example, a student who has not high selfestimation could not present the teamwork. Instead, he could record the brain storming of his team. On the other hand, competition between groups could appear when they are working on the same subjects. This can be avoided when the work of each team is different. Finally, in my school the summative assessment of each student takes under consideration the learning outcomes of collaborative work in projects. Experience has shown that students who actively participate in creative projects gain confidence and and strengthen their presence in school.

Anna La Montagna, Italy

monte6915 — 2016-11-07 14:28:56 UTC

I think that collaborative learning as a group facilitates to all the work and stimulates positive competition among the students. In my opinion the problem is to form groups that are working very well. Each group should consist of at most five or six students, should be well balanced from the gender and attitudes that each group has. Last week in one of my second class with a pupils of fifteen or sixteen years old for an hour we had a debate to try to form the functional groups. While the debate was taking place I observed the attitudes, annotated sentences, the “pro” and the “contra” and complaints that some students placed. We formed five groups and each group is expounding his ideas on padlet class on the breakfast theme. Students must prepare at the end a unique questionnaire about breakfast habits of Italian younger, decide how to administer it, how to analyze, how to communicate the results and especially what tools have to use to share the project on Etwinning. I hope that my first experience of group management also leave something positive for pupils.
In my school it often is not evaluated the aspect of collaboration among peers and we are still far from what is known today in Italy as authentic assessment.

Ana Pinheiro, Portugal

air_pinheiro — 2016-11-07 14:29:29 UTC

I consider the evaluation of collaborative activities very important. Important for the teacher but also very important for students. However, I assume that it is not easy to define and evaluation (at least for me). It must take into account not only the end product but above all the learning process. Several questions arise It is easy to individually assess each student? It is only rated the group? It is easy to discuss with students the assessment tools so that the evaluation serves to improve learning programs?

This module is very important and I hope turns to learn and reflect on the evaluation.

Maria and Anna, Italy

mariadecarlo — 2016-11-07 14:33:33 UTC

It's very important to expla immediately to the students the assestment wich will be made. In this way we will encourage students and especially we will empower them to work better in groups.

Anna and Maria, Ital

annagrignetti — 2016-11-07 14:33:39 UTC

It's very important to explain immediately to the students the assestment which will be made. In this way we will encourage students and especially we will empower them to work better in groups.

Michal

mp_boro — 2016-11-07 14:50:52 UTC

I am a big fan of collaborative learning, however, it is true that assessing students' work is the hardest part, from my point of view. I look forward to learning more in this module.

Camelia Vesa, România

2016-11-07 15:01:49 UTC

Sometimes the assessment of collaborative work discouraged students because I didn’t clearly specific tasks for each member of the group; I encourage each of them to choose the tasks for themselves related to their abilities. If you want the assessment to be timely, brief and clear, so the tasks should be. Only Physics and ICT lab use summative assessment of learning outcomes related to collaborative work.

Anita M. Italy

2016-11-07 15:15:15 UTC

1-Sometimes assessment of collaborative learning can discourage some students .2-To avoid that it is important , till the beginning of workgroup , making the right groups and explaining the rules necessary to share and collaborate .The "weight"of a group in its members it's an essential element for the teacher and the group management .3-a good assessment has to be regulated and timed comparing the different moments of the workgroup.Any way a brief and clear assessment has to collect in a few statements/points the goals that students got.(a schematic grid in multiple choice statements for the group and also for selfevaluation ..)4-In my subject the summative assessment for each student takes part in the learning outcomes related to workgroup results

Mariangela Bielli, italy

mariangela_biel — 2016-11-07 15:29:06 UTC

I agree that assessment should be brief, clear and timely and I try my best to do so because learning and formative assessment are parts of the same process. I take into account the outcomes of collaborative project work in the summative assessment of my subject .

Tamar Chalakheshashvili Georgia

tamarigia — 2016-11-07 15:29:16 UTC

Grades are always difficult. The main thing is to know how the students should be assessed, in what you are asking. Therefore, the teacher must have a pre-prepared evaluation criteria. When the rate of open, clear, the student in question does not show why the low or high score.

Helen, Belgium

2016-11-07 15:56:10 UTC

If assessment criteria are communicated prior to the learning activity, children know what they must do and how to achieve the best results. Creating a rubric WITH the students can be a very effective (but time consuming) way of doing this. An effective assessment tool can often be used by the students to self-assess and by the teacher. Some competition between students is inevitable but I often find it has a positive effect, making students more ambitious. At our school we can use these assessments to assess and report on both knowledge acquisition and collaboration skills.

Nils, Germany

2016-11-07 15:58:43 UTC

I try to communicte the criteria of the assessment more clearly because in the past some students felt discouraged.

Maria Chiara, Ital

mcricci — 2016-11-07 16:06:13 UTC

LIn my opinion assessment is a crucial aspect as students generally expect a mark/grade for the activity they have carried out, even some students only work if they know they will have a mark at the end. Therefore it is essential to make clear the sense of assessment before the beginning of the task and to create balanced groups in order to discourage a behaviour oriented mainly "to get a mark". It would be useful that each time they finish a lesson where they are working on a project, the students fill in a quick rubric where they self-assess their work (ex. Involvement, participation, production, etc). The final assessment of collaborative works should be taken into account in the summative assessment of the student in order to emphasize the value of collaborative learning.

Manoilă Maria, Romania

2016-11-07 16:07:07 UTC

I believe that learning is a project-based collaborative learning. To make the assessment in this case uses a rating scale. Cube or mosaic method can be used in collaborative learning.

Dorota Sobierańska, Poland

ds_sobieranscy — 2016-11-07 16:12:57 UTC

When I visit primary schools (as a university teacher), I very rarely observe situations in which students make self-assessment or evaluation in groups. Most often the teacher evaluates the students' work. This applies to formative and summative assessment. Unfortunately, in this way, we lose opportunities for the development of many valuable skills of our students.

Carmen Carella, Italy

carmencarella — 2016-11-07 16:13:49 UTC

I haven’t implemented the assessment for the collaborative work I have carried out in class till now, so I need to learn. Nonetheless, I think students may feel the assessment is not fair when the teacher assigns the same grade to the group while they know perfectly well the most confident of them do all the work and the weaker students are usually helped. Maybe this could be avoided by using a rubric where we take into account all the aspects like an effective participation, a good behaviour, the ideas the bring to the project, the way they organize the work, etc. As I still use the traditional way of assessing students, both in oral and written skills, at least I provide that the assessment is brief clear and timely, but I would like to learn more about these 3 guidelines. When I implemented the Mystery Skype project, I knew it was a very different way of working in class that needed a different assessment, but I didn’t take into account the learning outcomes related to the collaborative work, because I felt very uncertain if to deviate from the standard, as we all still follows the classical criteria at my school, even though the headteacher encourages us to experiment new frontiers of teaching and learning.

Ana Chambel, Portugal

aachambel — 2016-11-07 16:16:24 UTC

I think that often collaborative work encourages to the competition however I consider that if the work focus mainly on project methodology that can be avoided. The evaluation I usually do always tries to be brief, clear and timely, in part also due to the age group of my students, usually at my school we use self-assessment grids that I consider to be very useful and effective.

Marco Martinelli, Rome, Italy

radagast1974 — 2016-11-07 16:34:30 UTC

In the Italian school system, teachers have relative freedom to design their own summative assessment . This is enabling me to include artifacts such as laboratory experimental reports (I teach Science) in my assessment, alongside written tests and oral exams. In the UK, where I have worked before, assessment is much more standardized and any legal grade is given by external authorities and based on written tests. This makes it difficult to integrate any other aspect in the assessment. I am still a bit questioned about assessing collaborative work. In order to give a grade to each individual of the group, I should have evidences that all of them have given a fair contribution. Moreover, the fact that a participant not contributing well can bring down the grades of everyone can be counterproductive: other members of the group may become angry and the situation may become tense. I am not quite sure how to avoid this.

Maria Tiago, Portugal

mariatiago — 2016-11-07 16:53:43 UTC

Assessment is an important part of the learning process for both teachers and learners. Assessment is an ongoing process that gives feedback to the teacher focused about how and what students are learning – through both observation and direct feedback from students. Assessment also involves providing criteria that help students see how they are doing and how they can improve or what students still need to learn.

Students can participate in this process in many ways; self-assessment and peer assessment or both, according to their age/level.

It can also take the form of “I can” statements, learner contracts, reflections, portfolio reviews, and recording oneself.
But it is also imperative that teachers have proof of what the students have learned during that process. It is the summative assessment that is used to determine grades and future directions for students. This type of assessment is the culmination of a unit/section/chapter of study. Summative assessment tells both the teacher and the student what areas are clear to the student, and which will require more work. For summative assessment to be effective and useful, the results of a summative assessment need to be compared with some sort of a standard; this could be within the class, city-wide, province/state-wide, national standards ,that what is done in Portugal ( 9th and 12thgrades -exams)

Daniela Pagnini

daniela_pagnini — 2016-11-07 16:57:39 UTC

3.3 Assessment for improving collaborative learning

In my opinion formative assessment encourages students to collaborate more effectively in group. Moreover it is equally important that teachers enhance individual and teams’ self-assessment in order to reflect on the way they work together. In my experience most part of summative assessments take into account the results of students’ collaborative activities.

Rosa/ Italy

rosadilonardo — 2016-11-07 16:59:10 UTC

In my opinion assessment should encourage students to benefit from t the process of teaching . The effectiveness of the message given to students is also key to keep in mind when designing and implementing assessment. Feedback regarding assessment must be brief, clear and timely. Self-assessment and peer assessment can be fast, timely and objective when assessing collaborative learning if: (1) it is implemented in parallel with learning activities, (2) it uses the same language used by group participants, (3) it is conducted diplomatically so as not to create obstacles in the social relationship of the group. Ultimately, assessment has to be useful for learning; it must make sense for those being assessed and not only for those assessing.

Carla Langella, Italy

profcarla_langella — 2016-11-07 17:07:52 UTC

Assessing collaborative work is time consuming, it needs accurate observation of the students WHILE they are working. This means a teacher has to assist them, facilitate their work, be a tutor, a consultant, an expert and an assessor. So we often evaluate the final product.

Lorena Olaru, RO

leoatomix — 2016-11-07 17:10:09 UTC

Collaborative activities are best assessed collaboratively.

Set clear objectives and tasks
Allow for open collaboration
Allow access to learning tools
Limit explicit direction
Define clear expectations.

Francesca, Italy

sercase — 2016-11-07 17:15:47 UTC

I have a lot to learn about collaborative assessment, as in my classes it is quite difficult to get all students in a group to do their part. Probably I will have to implement it, maybe introducing a rubric for group self-assessment, to reflect on the way they are working together. This could be a useful tool to make them learn the principles of successful and effetcive team work. I have definitely still a lot to learn!

Angelo, Rivoli, Italy

Angelo — 2016-11-07 17:16:54 UTC

I think teamwork is discouraged unless it is not evaluated. I say clearly to my students that teamwork is valued and rewarded more than individual works (because the older students I leave the option to choose whether to work in a group or not).
I can not always give timely feedback to all groups: I give a feeback to one or two groups at a time.
The final summative evaluation of the group work also takes account of the process behind the artifact, process I ask the students to record in a logbook.

Emiliana Rufo, Italy

emiliana_rufo — 2016-11-07 17:20:25 UTC

I assess briefly and clear my students' tasks. I think collaborative work encourage students especially when they understand which is the aim of the activity. When I have to assess collaborative activities I use SWOT analysis and students give their opinions on projects, too.

Cinzia F:, Italy

nicomd — 2016-11-07 17:28:41 UTC

Assessment is one of the most important parts of a teacher work. It is not easy to evaluate group work and sometimes teachers can do mistakes if they are not able to assess the group as a whole but each student contribution as well . If students know that as a result of their involvement in a group work , they will be assessed also individually and not only as a group the will work better, giving each a contribution . So the most difficult thing for a teacher is to be able to use a rubric that takes into account these two aspects. The summative assessment of each student in my subject takes into account also the learning outcomes related to collaborative work .

Cinzia Centrone

centrone_cinzia — 2016-11-07 17:37:47 UTC

In my experience assessment of collaborative work doesn't discourage students. They want to work in groups because they know that together it's more simple to learn helping one an another. But it happens that among groups the competition can be strong if the teacher gives the same activity to do to every group. Assessment must be brief, clear and timely and must includes self assessment and peer assessment. Sometimes in my school summative assessment includes only some outcomes and not all learning process. It needs rubric and criteria.

Carmen Rodríguez, UK

c_rodvix — 2016-11-07 17:49:07 UTC

I would be interested in learning more about assessment on collaborative projects especially when you don’t have too much time. I teach Spanish once a week and lessons are very short. The lack of time makes difficult to carry out formal assessments while working on teams. The thing I do is to check and provide feedback while children are doing the task so at least I try to make the most of my short sessions. I like talking to my students a lot, I try to praise them, give them instant feedback, make them think about their performance….I do it both as a team and also as individuals because sometimes not everybody works “properly” inside of the team so it´s important to make sure they understand their role and not get lost. At the end of the lessons I also put aside some time to talk altogether so in an informal way, we provide feedback to each other. Sometimes is impossible to do it in every lesson but if for any reason we didn’t have time, I´ll make sure that in the following session we make it happen. Is there anybody in my situation? What do you normally do? What are your suggestions? ��8-�w

Maria A., Greece

2016-11-07 17:54:25 UTC

Maria A.,

2016-11-07 17:54:25 UTC

My students are very competitive and they find it "unfair" to take the same assessment with their peers in their group. All this discussion gave me the idea to try group-self assessment, each group will have to assess their own group work.

Sandra Lourenço, PT

2016-11-07 18:00:20 UTC

Assessment of collaborative work should never discourage students, it should encourage them to overcome their difficulties and pursue their goals.

I have some trouble in incorporating collaborative work in summative assessment, because my school doesn´t take this into account – tests are considered to be the real summative assessment and their weight is enormous in the student´s evaluation. I think that, in my school, and in Portugal, we have a long way to go in what concerns student´s assessment, but I believe that some work is already being done.

Iliyana, Bulgaria

2016-11-07 18:01:02 UTC

It is very important for students to know in advance how they will be assessed when they work on project in teams. It is good to explain them what the criteria for the assessment is. Usually students are encouraged to choose their role in the team and to give self-assessment to their work and outcome of the collaborative work .

Roberta Minì, Italy

robertamini — 2016-11-07 18:31:37 UTC

What I've noticed among my students is that they work together helping each other not competing. In the Italian system despite all the different or innovative methods we can use, the assessment moment is still individual; students ask for a grade and this means that in order to get a vote they miss the aim of any collaborative activities planned, even because they are not always happy to receive the same grade of the ones who worked less in team work.
As I teach in six classes from 14 to 19, the groups I work with vary from too many points of view. All the classes are heterogeneous and in each of them I may have even three, four or more students in special needs, so that, in an inclusive perspective, the group work has to be guided and tutored but a sort of leader who is in charge to involve all the other group mates.
Assessment of collaborative work is definitely really hard; nevertheless I try to explain them in advance the way I will assess showing them a simple rubric through which I will evaluate their team work.

Adina Marcu,Romania

adinamarcu9 — 2016-11-07 18:36:22 UTC

My students are very competitive! All groups have a leader and sometimes they find unfair to take the same assessment with their peers in their group.So,sometimes,i try to let them to assess their own group(group self assessment)

Serena Visai, Italy

2016-11-07 19:20:10 UTC

I think my assessment doesn’t discourage students but I don’t think I have a timely and clear feedback. It focusses more on the outcome than the process. That’s why I enrolled in this course. I need to find strategies to boost collaborative work in a more meaningful way.

Valeria Manfreda, Italy

valy74manfry — 2016-11-07 20:24:54 UTC

My student used to work together and collaborate to help every pupil. They are competitive, but in a positive way for example to create the best power point, to create the best way to study to share their result. Assessment is important because they learn to work in a good way for their life.

Gülhanım,Turkey

gul_ektem — 2016-11-07 20:25:43 UTC

Assessment is a perfect tool for feedback. I dont thing it encourages students.

Ana, Portugal

anasalonso — 2016-11-07 20:26:23 UTC

When students work together, they help each other but when they work as a single individual, they tend to compete with other students. Assessment of collaborative work should never discourage students although it encourages them to overcome their difficulties and reach their goals.

Iolanda Moya

2016-11-07 20:46:54 UTC

I don't think assessment of collaborative work discourage students or encourages competition. However, some students who have been working hard during the project and at the end the result hasn't been as good as he expected, they have said there wasn't fair. I always try to add collaborative work results in the summative assessment, but to be honest, this type of work hasn't got the same importance as the individual assessment...something to think about...

Mina/Italy

ponzianomina — 2016-11-07 20:51:34 UTC

I don't think my assessment of collaborative work sometimes discourage my students because I have the habit to evaluate every performance and they know them. If I don't do it they ask me the grade or the sticker.
I try to take into account the learning outcomes to collaborative work in the summative assessment such as my etwinning projects

Sarah Mallia, Malta

sarahborg85 — 2016-11-07 20:53:56 UTC

I use different kind of assessments. I think that when students collaborate there is less competition when compared to individual assessment. In a group some students tend to reply on others whilst others, the born leaders, will always try to take control however one can also observe the benefits because they learn a lot from each other. Groups still compete with each other however the competition is minimised. I also give verbal or written feedback after each assessment so that my students can improve.

Massimo, Italy

massimo_pescato — 2016-11-07 20:58:54 UTC

I do believe assessment is the critical point in collaborative learning because students don't feel the responsibility of their work.

Isabel Graça, Portugal

2016-11-07 21:00:44 UTC

I think the assessment of collaborative works can discourage some students and also trigger competition if it is not structured. I believe that specific rubrics are the answer: they can be also brief, clear and timely, using self-assessment and peer-assessment. I also think that formative assessment is underestimated as a determining factor for verifying the evolution of learning. Teachers kind of expect students to know what they learnt, because they taught it. In my school the outcomes related to collaborative work are took into account in summative assessment.

Valerica- Romania

dvaly2010 — 2016-11-07 21:08:03 UTC

I think it is important that every student involves in the collaborative activity. The feedback is very important in order to know further what to change, how to make everyone to participate and to not be discouraged in future. I am glad I am participating on this course because I learn from what my colleagues share from their experience.

Despoina Amarantidou, Greece

damarant — 2016-11-07 21:15:47 UTC

Assessment is crucial for collaborative work because children get used to it and try to improve their work. Feedback should be consultive so that students do not get disappointed and discouraged.

Pisa/Italy

2016-11-07 21:30:28 UTC

I do think that assessment is crucial and makes the difference between "putting together students to work " and collaborative learning. The point is : how can demotivated or weak students take and share the same responsibilities as the others? The leader of the group for skills or personality would take over and tend most of the work. That is the challenge to avoid.

Kimberley Edwards, Ireland

2016-11-07 21:39:52 UTC

I think that it is important to assess collaborative exercises to give an added purpose to it to develop the students as learners and to develop their life skills. Sometimes I will give the students a rubric to assess other groups and then their own and look at ways they could have improved their collaboration. I will go around to each group and individuals to check in and help/praise them for their work. Summative assessment is take into account for collaborated projects in my school.

Cristina Paliotes, Portugal

paliotes_cristina — 2016-11-07 21:51:34 UTC

Most of the time the collaborative work encourages the competition, however if the work focuses mainly on the methodology of the project the competition can be avoided.

The evaluation that I tend to carry out seeks to be brief, clear and timely in part because of the age group with which I work. Usually at my school we use self-assessment grids that I find to be very useful and effective.

Angelamaria Galderisi, Italy

soleemare_a — 2016-11-07 21:52:44 UTC

I think each assessment has to be adapted to the situation in which we teach. There isn’t a fixed kind of assessment or feedback, but we have to understand which one best suits to our teaching context. For eaxample, classroom dialogues and effective questions allow teachers and students to explore more complex ideas and processes. The assessment I carry out is brief and clear (I use marks) and timely (speaking and writing assessment twice a month). Project works are taken into account by the summative assessment of each period.

Teresa

2016-11-07 21:53:16 UTC

Assessment of collaborative work should never discourage students and, if it encourages competition, it should be with themselves, not with their colleagues. I think that we, as teachers, have an important role explaining how both works and students are going to be assessed. This will help students to become aware of what they will need to do and it will also resposabilize them in the learning process.

Paulo Martins,Portugal

2016-11-07 22:11:36 UTC

My assessment does not discourage my students, it reinforces their commitment to learning. I try always not to encourage competition. Assessment must contribute to a collective conscience promoting the idea that students learn better in groups because they can overcome their difficulties more easily when they help one another.

Carla Diogo, Portugal

2016-11-07 22:12:27 UTC

I have been working with collaborative/ cooperative work in the past few years and assessment still is my biggest problem. I really have difficulty in assessing students who work with these new pedagogical trends. It's so difficult to assess fairly a group work and students also feel that. Besides, we, the teachers were taught to mark and not to assess and that is a terrible handicap. I am looking forward to getting information from this module, so that my problems start vanishing.

Francesca, Italy

francescagiala — 2016-11-07 22:31:54 UTC

The importance of collective formative assessment is to create a sense of a learning community because each student can see how their individual pieces add up to something greater when they collaborate.
Sometimes I ask them to realize individual outcomes. I think that the two aspects are important, but it is necessary to be clear, timely and involve the students with self assessment.

Atanasija, Croatia

2016-11-07 22:38:52 UTC

I always encourage my students to be an active paticipants in grading oneself and others. They are really objective and their assessment is always supported by more detailed explanations.

Natalija, Serbia

2016-11-07 22:48:45 UTC

Assessment of collaborative work is definitely really hard;
nevertheless I try to explain them in advance the way I will assess showing them a simple rubric through which I will evaluate their team work.

Šárka, the CR,

sarka_opatova — 2016-11-07 23:03:40 UTC

If you assess the final product and the way students engage in collaboration, it needn't be competitive. But yes, usually students are evaluated as individuals and it is not so common to give a group mark. You can give 2 marks, group and individual. The question would be the value of the marks, we have 1 to 10 (10 is the biggest). Maybe they should have the same value. When having presentations, peer assessment is in the lessson into rubrics, I collect it, and make one chart with their score and one with mine. Sometimes SS are stricter than me, other times 'nicer', but very often we agree.
The summative assessment includes marks throughout the year, so there can be presentations, as well. but just collaboration skills are not scored.

Fátima, PortugalCollaborative learning teams are said to attain higher-level thinking and preserve information for longer times than students working individually.” In my opinion, teams tend to learn through “discussion, clarification of ideas, and evaluation of other’s ideas”. When students are involved in the same project, when they establish for themselves the priorities and the goals, they have also the capacity for make themselves the assessment of all the procedures.

fffcaeiro — 2016-11-07 23:16:23 UTC

Alessandro, Italy

maralex100 — 2016-11-07 23:45:00 UTC

I'm not yet used a collaborative learning activity, so I am not yet been involved in assessment. In this moment, I'm thinking about a mixed assessment tool, as (1) writing a rubric focussing on the collaborative output (for example giving 4 points of total 10) and (2) asking to students to do an individual work focussing on knowledges, abilities and competencies acquired (giving them the last 6 points of total 10).

That's could be ok?

João Sá, Portugal

2016-11-08 00:13:24 UTC

If we, as teachers, would establish well defined rules and be clear about assessment objectives the competition will be controlled. However, the class relationships and personal traits have some influence that we are not able to completely controll.
A brief, clear and timely communication is underlying to any well designed and well implemented assessment.
In my school, it’s is usual the summative assessment to take into account multiple outcomes such as projects and others evidences, which is commonly reflected in evaluation criteria.

Jesus Leão, Portugal

2016-11-08 01:44:16 UTC

In my assessment of collaborative work, I do not feel that it discourages students, but sometimes encourages competition, not individual, but between groups.
I fully agree that the assessment should be brief, clear and timely so that students are aware of their learning stage, assume their responsibility, regulate their efforts by identifying their strengths and weaknesses, overcome their difficulties.
It is important that this evaluation helps them to become aware of the importance and advantages of collaborative work, because "together is more and better".
I think both self-assessment and peer assessment can be quick, but it must be timely and objective to work effectively. It is very important that the language used is appropriate to the group and the way it is done does not affect the students' susceptibility. To avoid embarrassing situations, I combine with them that when they have a negative criticism to do they have to present an alternative or suggestion for improvement.
At my school, the evaluation criteria focus on the assessment of knowledge and skills (80%) through summative tests, mini-tests and oral expression registers. The learning outcomes related to collaborative work are considered in the field of attitudes and values, with a weight of only 20% in the overall evaluation.

Manana Jakeli, Georgia

mmmjakeli — 2016-11-08 05:37:32 UTC

I absolutely agree that assessment should be brief, clear and timely; So, I think this module is very useful...

Marilena, Greece

becsa1 — 2016-11-08 06:27:41 UTC

The school does take into account the learning outcomes of a project, completed in a specific subject (after all, tests are only part of a grade). However, it does not take into account project/collaborative work completed in the context of participation in a school performance, or an after-hours school project. I believe there should be a form of assessment designed for these activities and integrated in the student’s profile/final grade.

Camelia

andreaman75 — 2016-11-08 06:33:59 UTC

I usually use any kind of assessment , even peer assessment and self assessment. It is useful for kids to reflect on their own work. But sometimes students have in mind their friendship. This is way it is important to have a grid of assessment.

Margherita -Italy

margheritabalistreri — 2016-11-08 06:53:43 UTC

I think that through assessment of collaborative work it could be the risk of encouraging competition among groups or individuals. The role of the teacher therefore is to avoid that leading students to overcome this "borderline" threaten. I agree with the sharing of checklists when they work in team so that they know in advance "what" is going to be assessed during their work and not "who" . My assessment is usually simple through a list of grades, but I think it is rather reductive. Anyway I also try to consider the learning outcomes in the summative assessment.

Lorraine Cardona, P

lockycardona — 2016-11-08 07:46:52 UTC

I think that there is always some kind of competition but there is also compromise and the process is measure by the nature of that competitive edge, if the teacher keeps it in a constructive and positive competition it is guaranteed that there is going to be knowledge, motivation, compromise and a high quality of work because the standards are raced over the bar and sometimes this happens by accident depending on the student engagement and motivation toward. The activities, for example I made a group acrostic with the word natural resources and each student had a letter and they had to draw a concrete poem related with the word it wasn't meant to be a competition between groups but as every group or class would get the opportunity of doing one it became a group effort to be the best in show, so an individual activity became collaborative because they help each other with their talents to show the best work and knowledge was shared along the way also the motivation was present so competition is a teachers opportunity of raising expectations and of course we have to stablish first hand the elements that are going to be evaluated as we measure the engagement of the students toward the activities, usually I started by presenting the objectives and the elements of the rubric, what is the outcome expected and how are we going to get there, what are the materials at hand and a timeframe to get it done and as they know the timeframe they can plan ahead and get the job done as expected. I also encourage feedback and I give them a diary or record of the advances and work or contributions made by each member so everyone is expected to work, sometimes when one student gets discouraged we make a compromise where we stablish whats expected from him in the group and a deadline and it has always worked for me that everyone get eventually involved.

Simona, the Czech Republic

simonabrothankova — 2016-11-08 08:13:13 UTC

I provide formative assessment during groupwork or pairwork. I monitor the progress of each group and when everything is OK, I say so. When I see a problem, I give advice. I do not make too much fuss about every mistake or problem students encounter. I remain positive and helpful.
I have never tried self-assessment and I do not include products of groupwork in summative assessment as I find the share of each students very difficult to assess. I expect few teachers (if any at all) assess products of groupwork.

emma giurlani Italy

2016-11-08 10:15:04 UTC

Fully agree:

assessment has to be useful for learning; it must make sense for those being assessed and not only for those assessing.

I try to consider each kind of assessment while working with my classes and eTwinning projects do help a lot providing many occasions to create formative assessment, peer assessment and summative assessment. I normally use rubrics which we use to create with the participation of students “ensuring that students are involved in defining the assessment model”

. We generally use google forms , but las year during a previous course I found out about the tool called RUBISTAR which can be found under this link: http://rubistar.4teachers.org/;

we (our students and my eTwinning colleagues and me ) found it very useful. I think it is crucial to educate students to assess in a fair and proper way their own work and the work of project partners and to accept to be assessed and evaluated in the same fair way.

Normally we consider by summative assessment obviously also the several learning outcomes when students are requested and expected to engage in group work, develop projects and present results, build blogs or other digital products. Unfortunately our school system doesn’t integrate these types of learning outcomes into the final assessment. Of course there is urgent need for innovation also in what concerns assessment .

Sidonia Voica, Romania

sidogeocris — 2016-11-08 10:49:16 UTC

I have never tried self-assesement and i do not include products of groupwork in summative assesement, but I think that is a positive for students

Hülya, TURKEY

hulyaos31 — 2016-11-08 12:43:27 UTC

I think assesment is necessary in our learning activities to be more succesful and to be fair.

Maria Laura - Italy I think that a clear assessment must be provided before work. Students should know that the criteria adopted by the teacher to evaluate the work (and not the student). A well-built card, perhaps with the students, can be of help .In my school students know that collaborative work is valued and take it into account.

beltramilaura1 — 2016-11-08 12:52:08 UTC

Els Teerlinck Belgium

els_teerlinck — 2016-11-08 13:00:34 UTC

Whatever form of assesement you use, it's important that students know what will be looked at. This have to be explained in clear language so that they know very well what is expected.

Arlindo Pereira, Portugal

2016-11-08 13:45:34 UTC

In my opinion, the assessment of collaborative work sometimes Will discourages the better students because they think that their work is only assessed in the group as a whole. The competition with students in this kind of work, do not maked sence. As the vídeo refers, it is important the use of assessment tools. The rubric for group self- assessment, to refleet the way they are work together it´s also important. In my school, the summative assessment of each student, do not take account yet the learning outcomes related with collaborative work.

DEBORA

debora_defina — 2016-11-08 13:45:42 UTC

The different kind of assessment are all very important to improve our potential of teaching and it is essencial for students

Isabel Rato, Portugal

2016-11-08 14:12:10 UTC

Often self and hetero group work assessment discourage students or encourage competition. However, this assessment should encourage them to work together and not to compete, as we learn more and better in group, since we share the difficulties.
To overcome these constraints, the evaluation (the feedback should be brief, clear and given time) should be implemented in parallel with the learning activities, using the same language used in the group and conducted diplomatically; then, the evaluation will be useful for learning.

Ana Cristina Ginja, Portugal

2016-11-08 14:21:49 UTC

The evaluation of collaborative learning should take into account the formative evaluation and the evolution of each one, counted from its diagnostic evaluation. Self evaluation and hetero evaluation is also a practice that will develop in students the ability to be critical. Articulate the knowledge of each one in favor of a group that together grow and enrich their knowledge.
I also believe that collaborative work among teachers should be promoted in order to articulate content and ensure sequencing of learning

Erika Colombia

2016-11-08 16:02:47 UTC

I believe assessment is important but more important is how to apply this assessment. Prestablished assessment sheets are not as good as individually created ones becaause they are looking for more general aspects. Individual assessment sheets requiere lots of work but hey are worth it.

Maria Teresa /Italy

teresarughi — 2016-11-08 16:06:52 UTC

I have never experienced students' discouragement in assessing their collaborative work. On the contrary, students who tend to be lazier or used to piggybacking, usually become more self-responsible and self conscious of their role, whenever they have a poor result, compared the other group members.The assessment is generally clear and brief.Sometimes it is not timely. The summative assessment takes into account the learning outcomes and the project results.

Gisella de Liddo, Italy

2016-11-08 16:25:24 UTC

Assessment of collaborative work does not discourage students nor encourages competition, according to my experience.
My assessment is brief and clear, and I try to make it as timely as possible. To make it so, I prepare the rubrics and checklists beforehand, and have them ready during the work.
Our school system still has got to make big steps forward in enclosing projects into the summative assessment of a student, but we are improving!

Aggeliki Belehaki, Greece

abele — 2016-11-08 17:10:53 UTC

Assessment helps teachers improve our work and make it more effective. It is very useful to be able to create assessment tools both for the teacher (ourself) and for the students. I also believe that students are getting better when they are assessed than not to.

Elisabete Carvalho, Paula Cavadas, Paula Usha, Olga Seabra_Portugal

elisabete — 2016-11-08 17:20:39 UTC

The criteria are previously discussed and approved at department meetings, and then taken to the approval of the Pedagogical Council. Each department will draw up an evaluation grid to be used in the following school year. We always seek an assessment of the three types (formative, self-assessment and summative) that are brief, clear and opportune. This deliberation is a result of the application of clear and well-defined criteria, which are made known and explained to students at the beginning each school year. Self-assessment always carried out with the participation of the student and the feedbacks timely given by the teacher focuses on personal reflection, commitment, motivation, participation, and peer group participation, among others. The analysis of information gathered over the periods assesses the progress of individual goals.

Elisabete Carvalho, Paula Cavadas, Paula Usha, Olga Seabra_Portugal

olga_seabra — 2016-11-08 17:26:41 UTC

Helly, Vienna

h_swaton — 2016-11-08 17:32:21 UTC

In my school assessment of collaborative work doesn`t matter a lot to many of my colleagues. So the students are not used to it. It will take time to implement it on my school. But I will try.

Kristina Kaučić, Croatia

2016-11-08 17:36:31 UTC

My assessment mostly encourages my students. My colleagues do not pay much of attention to the assessment of collaborative work, so my students are not used to me assessed. My assessment is clear and timely. I usually use rubrics.

Maria Teresa, Italy

carmarter — 2016-11-08 17:54:05 UTC

I am having completed several projects eTwinning I got to realize collaborative assessment of the work done. The assessment was made in a clear and targeted both for possession of the learned knowledge of the ways of working together. Pupils from different schools met also through video conferencing to reflect on their work. The assessment was aimed to improve what has been achieved by stimulating the commitment and competition between pupils. Known, however, that in my school generally other teachers do not have a collaborative assessment

Ângela and Tânia, Portugal

taniaalves23 — 2016-11-08 18:03:38 UTC

We believe that collaborative work should encourage all students to participate equally. Only then, the work becomes more enriched. All students benefit in the same way because competition stimulates learning.

Viviana, Italy

vivianasavino75 — 2016-11-08 18:50:07 UTC

My assessment is brief, clear and timely and it encourages students to work toghether in a collaborative way. In my school, the summative assessment doesn't take into account the learning outcomes related to collaborative work.

Annamaria/Italy

anidigre — 2016-11-08 19:15:12 UTC

I've not experience of assessment of collaborative work but in the projects that I have done we didn't take into account any learning outcome related to collaborative work, just something related to individual accontabitity and the ability of the student to work in team

Caterina Fantini, Italy

cate_67 — 2016-11-08 20:03:57 UTC

Each assessment has to be adopted to the situation in which we teach.I think that formative assessment is the best, above all with young students.

Martha Karvoundou, Greece

2016-11-08 20:48:43 UTC

I just use the student's self assessment in my lesson for the first time. I am curious about the results.

Sonia Scribano, Italy

soniascribano53 — 2016-11-08 20:59:02 UTC

I do not think that assessment of collaborative work discourage students but it can trigger competition between groups. Having a clear check list with specific criteria will help group and each student to put their weight in. Assessment is clear and timely if checklist and critirias are too. A list of questions can guide students to perform better and help them improve their work. I still need to work on improving the assessment of collaborative learning work. Time to do it is crucial as often overloaded yearly programme can prevent us from designing effective collaborative work which can be assessed properly.

Marina, Croatia

2016-11-08 21:07:35 UTC

I think assesment is important because it also gives feedback to the students.

Salomé, Portugal

2016-11-08 21:14:42 UTC

Mirjana Jovanovic, Serbia

mirjana_jovanovic_ns — 2016-11-08 21:33:58 UTC

In my opinion, competition might be avoided if the work of all participants is interdependent. If students are aware of the fact that they are like loops in a chain and that the whole project depends on every single person, they should help each other for the purpose of finishing their activity. For good assessment, I think, precise and clear rules should be established before the very beginning of a collaborative work. Self assessment is also a good choice.

Filipe Mira, Portugal

filipe_mira — 2016-11-08 22:16:16 UTC

When I do an evaluation I always try to encourage students to improve their learning never discourages them. In order to have a brief, clear and timely evaluation I think that the tasks carried out should be as well. In my school summative assessment encompasses several activities: projects and training records.

Elisabete Cruz -

elisabete_cruz3 — 2016-11-08 22:46:26 UTC

I think assestement are very important for students and teachers in their work. Clarity of purpose is key to any successful group. Before work begin, I usualy explain to the entire class simplified checlists. Having a clear goal that the entire team is working towards will prevent loss of focus, wasted time, and conflicting .I found very few conflict situations in my classes. They happened because a healthy competition exists. In my school there is no grid common to all departments, each has its own grid.

Ana Franco, Barcelos, Portugal

ana_lufranco — 2016-11-08 23:19:24 UTC

I believe that collaborative work effectively promotes competition. What I often see is bright students wanting to join weaker students, as they can thus almost autonomously impose their wills and try to "beat" other groups. The way I think it is effective, to control these situations is the formative assessment, reconciled with daily registration maps of the class in order to "oblige" everyone to work, "penalizing" those who do not get involved with the whole group. At my school, it is planned to evaluate these works, in the final evaluation. Otherwise, it does not seem to make much sense.

Ana Rebelo, Portugal

aisrebelo — 2016-11-08 23:24:10 UTC

In regular teaching, summative assessment, meaning individual tests, is the most important element of evaluation. Project works and other products/ results are also taken in account, but have, overall, a minor importance. I think that to change this, it will be necessary a major transformation of curricula.

Maja VK, Slovenia

maja_vicic1 — 2016-11-09 07:08:36 UTC

I often find that teachers are using new methods in aditiona to the traditional approach, so the result is often an overload of workw - ussually to be done at home (for teachers and students). It is a process for a teacher, to make peace with this and find the way (and the courrage) to implement new approaches into given curricula. I personaly try to incorporate new approaches also into summative assessment. It helps, if the estudents are a part of designing criteria.

Jana, Germany

oldpadlet — 2016-11-09 07:26:34 UTC

The assessment of collaborative work discourages students if we do it summatively by looking at the whole product at the end only. If the actual aspect they have been working on is evaluated, there is usually no problem. So, throughout the collaborative project, there need to be defined steps of where and criteria on how the students are assessed. It is a good idea to give the class a working plan that is flexible as well as binding. Additionally, it is important to keep telling them that their overall product can only be as good as the individual contributions. Consequently, I try to give "points" for any work they do supporting another student. For example: The students have to write a blog and comment on each other's contributions, e. g. everybody has to leave three comments regarding a) visuals b) content c) language in an EFL class. Important: no student should receive more than three comments. If there are three comments already: Go to another blog. (popularity issues...)

Ester Degennaro-Italy

esterdegennaro — 2016-11-09 07:59:41 UTC

The assessment of collaborative work must be brief, clear and timely. Self- assessment and peer assessment (teamwork) with a checklist to follow during the work are essential because they increase motivation and students' ability to achieve personal and group goals.
I use rubrics and checklists
to encourage students to learn collaboratively without any competition.

Kateryna Kramnychna, Ukraine

rocksy_12 — 2016-11-09 08:10:03 UTC

These 3 types of assessment are used widely in the Ukrainian classrooms. For my pupils of primary school it is hard to use self-assessment correctly. But it is also useful for them just to try this type of assessment.

Giovanni, Italy

2016-11-09 08:59:03 UTC

I think that the assessment of collaborative work can be only a positive assessment.I'll consider the collaboration, the enthusiasm, the good will, the improvement to the collective activity. In case of bad collaboration I just will not assess the activity.

Isabella Santoro, Italy

2016-11-09 09:52:48 UTC

I use peer assessment and self assessment in my work, because it's necessary for student to learn a collaborative work without competition. The assessment of collaborative work don't discourage students when the teachers explain well how the assessment will be made.

Asun Ara, Spain

2016-11-09 09:56:19 UTC

Assessment of collabortive work should encourage students to get a gook mark as a group. Thus, if the students really work in a collaborative way, they will be motivated to get a good mark as a group since they will also get a good individual mark.

Students should see their mates as helpers in their process of learning and not as competitors, and they should take the role of helper as well. They should be aware of the advantages of collaborative learning since they will be helped by the others but they also improve their knowledge while they try to explain their mates some aspects that they know, but after their explanation, they will surely master.

To get this, we, as teachers, should inform our students of the whole process before they start to work in a collaborative way. For that, we have to carefully plan our didactic unit design and take into account some aspects which will be evaluated by taking into account sel-assessment and peer assessment. Both types of evaluation should be equally important. And of course, evaluation along the whole process should be summative and formative. Then, students will be aware of both their learning and their assessment.

Carlos Silva, Portugal

2016-11-09 10:49:54 UTC

In my class, the evaluation of collaborative learning is part of the formative evaluation. Self evaluation and hetero evaluation is made only at the end of the semester and usually at the end of each collaborative project. In that moment, the self evaluation of each project, I find some difficulties because students easily have competition between them, and their relationship gets affected when they have to evaluate the work of each other. They see the difficulties as something bad, for the worse students, and they try to omits. I feel that I have to prepare them better for this moment of evaluation at real collaborative work and make them believe about the advantages of sharing difficulties and about the grow of a group and the enrichment of their knowledge with the help of each other making progresses together.

This is my view, and I can use it in my class, but the system is not prepared to use results of the collaborative projects, the system have tools to evaluate individuals with individual work. I think the system should change too.

Paula Gomes, Portugal

2016-11-09 10:52:26 UTC

Roberta, Italy

carnevale_roberta4 — 2016-11-09 13:12:51 UTC

In my school, summative assessment doesn't take into account any learning outcome related to collaborate work.
When I carry out a collaborative learning activity I use an assessment grid taking into account several aspects: how the students collaborated with the others inside his/her group; how he carried out the role he had; what objectives were achieved and how. Students get both an individual mark and a group mark.
I don't think my assessment method fosters competition and actually I do not want it to do so. I hope it fosters the ability to work together and collaborate

Vanesa, Croatia

2016-11-09 14:10:41 UTC

I try that my assessment doesn't discourage my students nor encourage competition.
My assessment is clear and brief. I use an assessment grid and my students know which things I take into account while assessing them

Alessandro Ruffino / Italy

2016-11-09 14:24:45 UTC

I think that assessment of collaborative work encourages a healthy competition if you give to your students the elements to understand that it's important to work together and in the meantime to be evaluate about own grade of the collaboration, respect of the others, respect of the positions, how much to contribute etc.... I use a rubric to assess my students and often I assess them in brief, clear and timely way.f Regarding summative assessment, sure, in my teaching I assess collaborative work especially when I assign them a project work!

Maria, Italia

mariagranatiero — 2016-11-09 16:29:13 UTC

I think the best evaluation is the evaluation summative

Nicola S. - Italy

spotonicola — 2016-11-09 16:46:39 UTC

In my school we assess students individually and summative assessment take into account only written and oral tests. This practice can enhance competition especially among very motivated learners. Collaborative learning activities can be a solution to this problem only if the teacher evaluates not only the quality of the final product, but also the process which have leaded to the final goal. This is why the teacher should provide for several moments of formative assessment. If students know that their work is evaluated in order to make them improve and not only in order to give them a mark, they feel more confident and less stressed. So competition is avoided.

To ensure a brief, clear and timely assessment is useful to specify the criteria you follow. If students know exactly what they are expected to do, usually they are more engaged in the learning activity and they can understand better where they can improve. In my opinion the key point is to use an easy and clear rubric and to share it with students before the beginning of the activity and during the learning process.

To enhance students' awareness, it could be useful to give at the beginning of every learning phase a grid with some questions that enable students to plan what they are expected to achieve at the end of every learning phase. This means can help students to verify if they achieved their goals and this attitude triggers self and peer evaluation.

In addition to this, summative assessment should be the result of:

1) teacher's osservations, peer-assessment and self-assessment, which evaluate how collaborative students' attitude has been during the learning activity;

2) written and oral tests about the amount of academic content which every student has learnt;

3) the mark given to the final collaborative product.

Nadiia Holovchuk- Ukraine

sashka_nadiya — 2016-11-09 17:19:17 UTC

I my school students very often have collaborative work. We take part in different activities. It encourages them.

Costas Moschonas

2016-11-09 17:21:33 UTC

I think that if an assessment has to be fair then it should include all parts of the proccess. Self assessment, group assessment and teacher assessment should be considered.

Maria Tiago

mariatiago — 2016-11-09 17:35:18 UTC

Student self assessment and reflection

Students can participate in this process in many ways; self-assessment and peer assessment or both, according to their age/level.

It can also take the form of “I can” statements, learner contracts, reflections, portfolio reviews, and recording oneself.

Gina, Italy

ginapalumbo — 2016-11-09 17:43:07 UTC

My students usually work together and the competition , is a good kind competition !

Vitalija, Lithuania

2016-11-09 17:46:03 UTC

I don't think that my assessment of collaborative work discourages pupils much, most often it encourages students to work more actively, sometimes it encourages competition, but it depends on the character of the pupils' in the group. So very often I try to make groups according to the pupils' level of knowledge and pupils in the group know beforehand that they are responsible for each other and the final product is of great importance. They know that they have to get a good markas a group. The assessment must be brief, clear and timely. Very often I use assessment grids and pupils always know which things will be taken into consideration while evaluating them. Sometimes pupils get a mark for their individual work and then they get a mark for the final group work. That increases motivation

Fatih TOY / Turkey

2016-11-09 18:39:55 UTC

I don't think assessment of collaborative work discourages students but whether it discourages or encourages is mostly dependent upon the degree or strength of shared responsibility, working together, interdependency and substantive decisions in the group. If we can meet those four and other demanding codes of collaborative works, I don't think that assessment, particularly formative and self assessment types, is likely to discourage the students. Summative assessment stands as more product oriented assessment and for this reason it can distract the collaboration works to be conducted later. In my school, access to more prestigious high schools makes the teachers be inclined to opt for summative assessment and accordingly collaborative works do not attract the attention of all the stakeholders, teachers, students, administrators and parents....

Rossana, Italy

rossana_demartino — 2016-11-09 19:32:32 UTC

In Italy we are linked to the mark after an oral or written test and following a summative assessment. In my classes, through the flipped method, I try to propose collaborative learning through work in group and using formative assessment, and peer-assessment, with a rubric, specifying clearly what are the objectives the students have to reach and what is the final product and the attitudes and skills that will be observed during the collaborative learning. It' s important to adjust the activity if there are some things to add or modify.

Marianthi Arvanitidou- Greece

1canislupus22 — 2016-11-09 19:42:47 UTC

Given the importance of collaboration to effective classroom learning, this is certainly a topic that we’ll be addressing in future - See more at: https://www.nwea.org/blog/2013/encouraging-collaborative-learning-for-improving-student-performance/#sthash.SFf6uKa7.dpuf

Richard the Netherlands

r_hulsebos1 — 2016-11-09 19:51:40 UTC

Assessment

Olga Oliveira, Portugal

olga_amaro — 2016-11-09 20:11:37 UTC

I think sometimes collaborative work encourages competition not among students but among groups. I tried something to avoid that competition: during the project, the students are not allways in the same group. I provided a rotation: each student take part in different groups.
For a good assessment, I gave them clear rules, regarding the task, their behaviour and the time they have to complete the task.

Heidi, Germany

2016-11-09 20:53:43 UTC

Last time I assessed collaborative work in a group of 10th graders during a history lesson I think I didn't discourage students but incouraged groups to do better. So it can come to competition among different groups. Generally in my school assessment considers very often personal outcome and rarely group results. I don't like this fact

Helena Louzeiro, Portugal

2016-11-09 21:28:11 UTC

I don´t think that the assessment of collaborative work discourages students or encourages competition. Students need to know and to understand that in collaborative work everyone has to participate and share responsabilities. My students like to do collaborative work and i don´t see more competition than in individual work, on the contrary, because they know that the work depends on everyone.
In my class the summative assessment take into account the collaborative work.

Giuseppe/Italy

profgcorsaro — 2016-11-09 21:38:17 UTC

I'm thinking to use a webtool for assessment. It is https://www.forallrubrics.com/
But now I don't know how it can works with collaborative learning activities.

Giovanna, Italy

giostesciortino — 2016-11-09 21:41:07 UTC

I think assessment of collaborative work doesn't discourage students, on the contrary when I used it I felt a sort of more confidence in my students with the task they had to work about. They felt stronger in a group than alone and they were pushed to do the best they could

Ioannis Velonakis, Greece

2016-11-09 21:48:41 UTC

It is true that the assessment of collaborative work may encourage competiotion or disappoint students, especially the ones who have worked significantly. This can be avoided by redesigning the assessment by considering parameteres which are connected with the commitment, motivation, engagement

in teamwork and students' ability to achieve personal goals. For this purpose we may also use appropriate electrinic ryubris, in case they are well-designed. Unfortunately, in our educational system there are not specific creteria for grading collaborative skills yet and this is something that should change if we want to encourage students to work individually.

Paola, Italy

2016-11-09 21:49:05 UTC

In my experience assessment of collaborative work encourage students’ useful competition. So they not only learn better but also learn to be active part of a team to reach common goals.

Marta, Portugal

istruka — 2016-11-09 22:46:20 UTC

Assessment may sometimes discouge more weak students due to the fact that their assessment is based more on the product than on the process. Sometimes self-assessment is considered a secondary issue and not that important. But it is not so. Self-assessment is very important so students can reflect on their work.

Manuela Ortigão, Portugal

mortigao — 2016-11-09 23:57:37 UTC

I think it is true that assessment of collaborative work sometimes discourages or encourages students specially those students who worked hard in some activity or project. I try to avoid this unfair assessment using some parameters previously defined with students. In my school the summative assessment take into account the collaborative work in activities or projects.

Cristiana, Portugal

cristianafreire — 2016-11-10 00:06:55 UTC

I do not consider my assement of collaborative work to be discouraging; As a rule, the final result turns out to be better, especially for students with greater difficulties. With regard to competition, it may even be beneficial if it is not excessive. Whenever possible, I make the evaluation for content worked in a given class, that is, the task proposed for the lesson is evaluated, so it is timely and obligatorily brief.

The summative assessement elements I use are not restricted to tests; research job, report an experimental or laboratory activity … are also used.

Michel, Holland

michelfreriks — 2016-11-10 08:30:36 UTC

I think collaborative assessment helps student to develop skill in collaborative work. It also helps students who work significantly harder in group work. I really feel that self-assessment is a very useful tool.

Sandra Alves, Portugal

sandra_alves_ — 2016-11-10 09:40:51 UTC

I agree that assessment should neither discourage students nor motivate competition between them. The evaluation should be useful for the student to self-regulate their learning process.
It is also important that assessment helps students recognize the benefits of collaborative work and that together they learn more and better.
I fully agree that the assessment should be brief, clear and timely.
I use formative assessment more regularly than self-assessment and peer evaluation. It's something I have to change.

Cristina Rocha, Armindo Serra, Stela Batinas, João Reigado, Fátima Nave, Ana Marques, Martine Mendes e Rita Gil, Carmo Martins, Conceição Varela, Sara Gamito, Alexandra Figueiredo - Portugal

profarmindoserra — 2016-11-10 09:49:36 UTC

We think that depends on the profile of the students. But that is not discouraging overall.

The way it is done also helps to be motivating or desmotivating, it mainly allows students to analyze in what stages they are at work and in the learning process.

The assessment is a time of verification and consideration for the teacher and students, allowing them to know where they are in the learning and if they have and what changes they must make to acquire the skills that were presented and to achieve the objectives indicated by the teacher for that study or work.

In the classes that I teach all the assessment, from formative, summative and self-assessment is taken into account, most of the time it is done at the end of each tasks / work in order to allow students to understand what they have achieved and for the teacher to plan what Should take into account in the next class and deepen or advance in the teaching-learning process.

Sometimes it is also good competition to stimulate the interest of some students, it should be done in a balanced and diplomatic way. This should never happen internally in the groups of students when performing collaborative work, Perhaps rather between groups and not individuals. Once collaborative learning is more complex than individualistic learning, students must be conscious about how they are expected to collaborate. Since collaboration and conflict / competition are intrinsically related, educators should always teach social skills before employing tasks in which students have to collaborate. It will be beneficial in the teaching-learning process.

But we do take into account already all kinds of evaluation in the collaborative work in our disciplines in our school. We want is to improve it.

Sue AUS

suzanne_durick — 2016-11-10 10:44:00 UTC

I think collaborative work & assessment of collaborative work can lead to a mixed dynamic. There are those who thrive on improving the group, there are those who let the group down and can impact negatively on the whole group. They can overall become unmotivated if a member fails to engage significantly. I think the more collaboration, the better the chances of successful outcomes.
For feedback best to be brief, to the point & consideration given to all roles within the group. Formal summative assessment can follow & should have a part which specifically links to the collaboration within the group. I try to always include collaboration outcomes within the assessment rubric.

Agata Kuźmiek - Poland

2016-11-10 14:42:23 UTC

I believe that the assessment should be motivation for further action and fulfillment. The important thing is that there was a rivalry between students, but their desire to acquire knowledge - for themselves, and hence development. I agree with that assessment should be clear and concise.

Stavroula Lada, Greece

pde4424 — 2016-11-10 16:22:29 UTC

Assessment encourages competition, but it can't be otherwise, plus, students must be rewarded in proportion to their effort. Assessment exists every where, even in their playing and their games. What can be done, so students do not get discouraged or be competitive, is that the criteria of the assessment and the way of assessment is crystal clear to them from the beginning. This way, they know beforehand what must be done and how it is going to be evaluated. In my school summative assessment doesn't take into account the learning outcomes related to collaborative work, at least not very obviously and clearly.

Teresa Pires, Portugal

2016-11-10 16:27:32 UTC

I think collaborative work sometimes creates competition. However, I believe that this work, based on the project methodology, should be more a sharing and collaboration than the
The evaluation I make is brief and succinct to be in accordance with the age of the students. I use self-assessment and hetero-evaluation grids that give me an overall assessment of the work done.

Devis Pieri, Italy: How to assess collaborative learning

devispieri — 2016-11-10 17:47:42 UTC

The first step of an authentic assessment is the choice of assessment model according to the project or task to which it applies, which could include:
- the individual and collective learning outcomes;
- teamwork and group goals including individual commitment;
- the methodological process adopted to implement and complete the project or task;
The emphasis should be put on assessing what leads to the development of team work skills and the results or knowledge achieved by the group, much more than evaluating individual successes.
This process can be simplified using valuable tools, rubrics and checklist: these instruments should be brief, clear and useful to teachers' work and they should allow students to be engaged in their design.

Mimma, Italy

mimma_gioia — 2016-11-10 18:16:31 UTC

Assessment of collaborative work encourages competition. It will also responsabilize students in the learning process. The feedback is very important in order to know what to change and how to make everyone to partecipate. Students are not always happy to receive the same grade of the ones who worked less in team work . Assessment of collaborative work is definitely really hard.

Maria Panou/ Kalymnos, Greece

maria_themelis — 2016-11-10 18:33:19 UTC

I think it's very important to learn our students to collaborate without have a hard competition among them. A good way not to have a bad competition is to create teams where students will help each other to succeed the aims of the targets without to blaim at bad conditions. Another one is not to give grades by numbers but by actions or best activities as presents. It works!

Nehir ÇABUKER

nehircabuker — 2016-11-10 18:40:30 UTC

I think the assessment makes to develop students especially for their self improvement. I try to make them self assessment in my lessons.

Olgica, Serbia

olgicaspasojevic — 2016-11-10 18:46:14 UTC

Competition sometimes motivate students, especially in colaborative work. If we build the team spirit, collaboration will be better, and the results too.
Assesment of colaborative work is really difficult.

Clara Abegão, Portugal

acjesus — 2016-11-10 19:57:50 UTC

I think, specially if we are teaching secondary grade students, some get discouraged by collaborative work assessment, because some don't know how to adjust to an assignment without parameters and explicit instructions, as they have been doing all their school lives. They ask for tests and specific criteria. They want to know what is on the test and exactly what they need to get the best grade. I really don´t know how this can be avoided. In my school collaborative work is taken in account for the summative assessment in 10/100.

Maria Laura Mas, Argentina

mlauramas75 — 2016-11-10 21:50:29 UTC

At my school we are promoting other ways of evaluating students as we are switching to a more collaborative culture. We using rubrics and inmediate feedback as ways to include competences at the time of evaluating. It was been very helpful to provide students with the rubric prior to their work so they know what is expected from them. Self assessment and peer is also encouraged

ro

cristinapeicuti — 2016-11-10 22:09:05 UTC

Maria Stalia

mastalia — 2016-11-10 22:24:12 UTC

I think formative evaluation in combination with self-evaluation are the most effective ways of assessment in collaborative learning as long as the criteria are well defined to students through clearly designed rubrics. However, in my teaching context, students are recently encouraged to self-evaluate , though not enough and the system gives more importance to good old summative evaluation of each individual student by the teacher based on tests rather than on collaborative work and projects.

Isabel Nunes, Portugal

2016-11-11 00:15:20 UTC

In my professional career I have been checking the processes of evaluation, should be planned in order to promote learning and also to develop self-evaluation skills and peer assessment.

The evaluation should not only come at the end of the academic period, but must be seen as a learning activity that is embedded in the whole process of education.

In the context of collaborative learning in which involves a multiplicity of skills, evaluation of learning cannot be focused only in curricular content must consider all skills.

It is also my opinion that it is fundamental that the evaluation did not discourage students, but reinforce the commitment of the students with learning.

Assessment should encourage students to learn collaboratively and not encourage competition. The evaluation process should contribute to a collective consciousness, promoting the belief that we learn best in groups, because we can overcome our difficulties more easily when we help each other.

Olga Keramida-Greece

olkeramida — 2016-11-11 03:05:13 UTC

In Kindergarten, the traditional forms of assessment find little impact, since not only assessed the cognitive performance sector. In Kindergarten, the focus on knowledge conquest procedures in creative working conditions and highlight the communication
children's skills, acquiring responsibility through collective
work and critical thinking. Key aspects of the learning process
recorded and stored in the child's work folder,
«Portfolio» (non digital), an alternative form of assessment.

Svetlana, Estonia

svetlana_dychen — 2016-11-11 08:04:05 UTC

When my students participated in International projects, I took into account the learning outcomes rekated to collaborative work - summative assessment.In social Network like NIng every student has e-portfilio, which gives possibility for assessment. I used rubric for assessment of student's portfolio.

Ana, Portugal

2016-11-11 10:01:50 UTC

It’s easier to overcome difficulties when we share knowledge and responsibilities and students are the 1st to agree with this. However, they seldom realise that the collaborative work they might do is going to be assessed fairly or it will be taken into account in their final assessment of the subject. In general, school doesn't encourage this type of evaluation and when teachers have to obey to a predefined structure designed for all teahers and subjects they don't usually take into a fair account the learning outcomes related to collaborative work.

Catia, Sweden

katyfpr — 2016-11-11 10:28:10 UTC

When my students are working in groups, they expect that I will assess them fairly, so they do not show unmotivation or discourage. They usually help each other. Most of the times I use 2 or more types of assessment in the same project and so far it has been working well

María Napal, Spain

mnapalf — 2016-11-11 11:54:11 UTC

I use a lot group work, and try to make it as collaborative as possible, but I must agree assessment is one of the most tricky aspects of it. Every year, I notice "best" students, which take most of the responsibility over the work, get lower grades than they should, and that less involved students benefit from other's work. This is an issue for students, as well, which may discourage teachers from using collaborative work.
And I think it's my problem: either I don't know what and how to evaluate, or I don't use the proper evaluation instruments... but also a problem of the system: with classes of 60 students per teacher, it's impossible to closely follow all the groups, and to give timely feedback on all the aspects of the work.

SARA ITALY

sarossa — 2016-11-11 12:12:49 UTC

I very rarely use group work as a class tool, mainly because of time issue, but not only. My school system does not require we take into account collaborative work in our summative assessment

I think this is probably the most challenging part of collaborative learning! We tried to assess both group work and individual participation. For both teachers and pupils this remains a work in progress at the moment. The pupils are still learning to take responsibility for the the group work and the teachers are trying to find the best way to assess fairly and in a timely manner.

2016-11-11 13:08:05 UTC

susanna, italy

27luglio63 — 2016-11-11 14:07:11 UTC

sometimes it is possible specially at the beginning of this different way of work. to avoid it we can explain clearly the aim and then we must leave that each student understand the advantage of this method trying to do it.

Rosella, Italy

rosella_manni — 2016-11-11 14:20:46 UTC

One of the problems I have encountered with this style of learning is that students don't know how to adjust to an assignment without parameters and explicit instructions. Depending on the level you teach, students have come to expect rote types of learning. This habit is not easily broken. Many of my high school students and college freshmen have trouble adapting to this style of learning.
Some steps are useful for collaborative assessment:

Set clear objectives and tasks
Allow for open collaboration
Allow access to learning tools
Limit explicit direction
Define clear expectations

Marta Pereira

mpereira89_1 — 2016-11-11 14:40:04 UTC

Assess group's work for me is the hardest part. I do a lot group's work, and although i use a project assessment grid with clearly defined objectives, i monitor classroom work and i do self-assessment and peer-assessment, i'm always afraid not being fair with group's elements. For me this is the great goal that I intend to acquire in this course, to feel that i assess the collaborative work fairly. I do not feel that my evaluation of students' work discourages collaborative work or encourages competition. In the evaluation of each student in the subjects i teach, i always take into account the results of the group's work and i have never had unfavorable comments of that practice and they always want to do more group's work.

Margarida Sousa PT

2016-11-11 14:43:57 UTC

I think that as we are working with human beings, competion is always there and it depends on students`personality with or without effective tools.
Students are very critical and fair. They can make assertive judgements of each other and sometimes I can see effective changings of acting, just because of a simple work
They listen better to each other and they don´t like to disapoint the others. Groupwork also encourages the shy and more reserved ones.
I use formative assessment to give an immediate feedback, promoting individual commitment. This is very important.

Petra, USA

2016-11-11 14:49:05 UTC

I think I’m doing okay with my assessments. But it has been an issue to overcome the students’ group work experiences from other classes. I try to make sure that the collaborative work has separate assessments for individual sections and the group work as a whole. I do think that my assessment is brief and timely; I hope it is clear. I try to accomplish the latter by clearly explaining the expectations of the learning outcome in advance. I also check in between whether the overall goal is clear. If students are not used to this kind of work, I establish possible steps in a mock example. For the collaborative work I try to provide students with as many choices regarding tools and process as possible. Which also means that I need to stay flexible regarding my own expectations of the outcome.
The summative assessment of each student in my department does take different learning outcomes related to collaborative work into account.

Anabela Gonçalves, José Rui Ferreira and Teresa Fonseca, Portugal

2016-11-11 15:12:46 UTC

In our school context the experience that most students have of collaborative work in the classroom is still relatively small. When attending the secondary level, their courses aim at accessing higher education, thus they tend to think that this type of work is not rewarding enough in terms of final classification. This situation could be overcome with regular implementation of self-assessment and peer evaluation in students' final assessment. We think that this change is not only needed but it should also be accompanied by a change in the calculation to determine the individual classification of each student. Assessing the process involved in collaborative work isn’t validated by some students

In our experience with collaborative learning, one of the biggest difficulties is creating heterogeneous groups in which everyone has an equal participation because some students’ main objective is always to obtain a good final result.

Alessandra M., Italy

prof_alemurgia — 2016-11-11 15:47:25 UTC

It is quite difficult to balance group performance and individual one in a collaborative work; the big challenge lies in creating well-balanced groups and avoid either competition or passiveness; in our school summative assessment is not used for collaborative work. Rubrics could be the answer.

Sabrina Petrillo, ITALY

spwillothewisp9 — 2016-11-11 16:24:32 UTC

I think that assessing collaborative work is neither easy to design nor to plan, unless we work in a school context where “collaboration” is the keyword to find the criteria for assessing such a learning derived from work done in groups without running the risk to get in the way of the work itself. In order to avoid that, we should state outcomes which are clearer than in individual work and review work in progress providing detailed feedback. Of course the kind of assessment I usually carry out mainly depends on time and level of the class as well as on content but I think that both checklists, templates and graded rubrics (i.e., a jigsaw one), may help students find the way to achieve the grade they want. Unfortunately even in the secondary grade school the individual summative assessment of a foreign language, as in my case, does not specifically take into account the shared results.

Michela Zullo, Italy

2016-11-11 17:16:09 UTC

Assessing collaborative learning involves a new thinking way and allows teachers and learners to face many challenges such as:
- a new role of the teacher and the pupils,
- a good and authentic comunication between peers and peers and teachers,
- students become actors of the evaluation process in order to improve their own collaborative learning skills, to play their role, to know ideas of others: this is an imporant achievement but it isn't so easy to implement in Italian schools!
The main aspects of a comprehensive and valuable assessment are:
- skills and knowledge;
- checklists, rubrics... these identify themselves as useful tools to collect information to the teacher on the students' progress in the learning and provide feedback.
In other words it's clear that the evaluation activities should be used to promote learning and to develop self and peer-assessment skills. Simplifying this, assessment as learning which encourage students to take responsability, to monitor and analyse critically what they have learnt, to provide a better feedback.

mbacita — 2016-11-11 17:16:56 UTC

I do think that my assessment of collaborative work sometimes discourages Ss and it also encourages competition which is not a bad thing after all. I can only learn from my mistakes and find new ways to minimise the loss of my Ss'enthusiasm.

Ana Fernandes, Portugal

apmfm — 2016-11-11 18:02:33 UTC

In my opinion, the main function of assessment is the regulation of the student's learning. In order for the assessment to be encouraging for the students and avoid competition, it must engage them. Self-assessment it's a way for students to become aware of the extent of their efforts, involving them on this assessment task. I rely on assessment sheets using simple qualitative and/or numerical scales.
In my school the project work results and students self-assessment are taken in account, together with the summative evaluation. The assessment criteria are acknowledged by the students.

Enrica Maragliano - Italy

EMGe — 2016-11-11 18:46:44 UTC

As many other Italian teachers, I must admit I hardly assess the collaborative work as it is. Usually I ask students to present their job (in groups) but I ask each of them some questions about their job, so I can assess in this way: a score coming from the assessment of the result of the collaborative work (usually 40%) and a score coming from the assessment of the individual part of the presentation (the other 60%). This is not discouraging, as they are aware of the way I assess and everybody knows that they must know well their product/presentation, being the responsibility personal of each student.

Dhurata, Albania

2016-11-11 19:00:19 UTC

I think that encourages competition among students. Each of the students be more accountable and wants to work more. I think we work in project groups and activation has a positive impact on students.

José María Díaz, Spain

josemaria_diazfuentes — 2016-11-11 20:30:56 UTC

So far, my evaluation almost has not taken into account collaborative work because we have worked very little in that way. Although we have made some experiences, this year is when we decided to work them for real.

Michele, Italy

michele_blandino — 2016-11-11 20:45:26 UTC

I find assessment of collaborative work not easy to do. Sometimes teachers themselves give up before starting. In my opinion (I am happy to read that some Italians colleagues of mine on this course think the same as me), collaborative work should be assessed both individual and as part of a group. The score should be the result of this average. That's all!

Rosa Calvino

antonella_demaio — 2016-11-11 23:34:46 UTC

I think collaborative work assessment is very useful. because the goal is learning

Sharon, Australia

2016-11-12 02:49:46 UTC

When working with young learners the difficulty in assessing collaborative learning is even greater as the students themselves find working in group a challenge in itself.

Jole,Sicily

jolecapo — 2016-11-12 06:32:08 UTC

In the evaluation process I think it is important to start with an appreciation
the positive parts in the test carried out by the individual pupil. Hear the good parts carried claims
the boy's self-esteem and sense of strength.
The teacher should then take into account at least two elements:
a) the evaluation of the class and / or group that considers its performance with
middle of the group and with the objective to be achieved;
b) the personalized assessment that takes as a benchmark the performance of
subject itself by evaluating the before and after, to see if there was a progress.

viki dogani, greece,

2016-11-12 08:19:58 UTC

it encourages students, it is better than traditional method

Elena FP, Italy

2016-11-12 09:48:40 UTC

I think that 'traditional' assessment in collaborative work is actually discouraging. And actually, the learning outcomes related to collaborative work tend to be neglected when doing summative assessment. But I think that assessing the 'final result' of a team work can be encouraging and positive for learners. Perhaps we as teachers should switch from our 'assessment obsession' (marking, marking, marking) and focus on skills and competences instead.

Annamaria Egido, Italy

2016-11-12 10:35:45 UTC

I think collaborative work assessment is encouraging and positive for students. It will also responsabilize students in the learning process.

Cristina, Italy

2016-11-12 12:05:22 UTC

I teach at the middle school in multi-level classes (our school is in a rather depopulated mountain area). I'm trying to assess both work group results (assessing the product - a slide presentation, a poster, a conceptual map) and the individual performances (assessing, for example, how each member of the groups explain to the class the topic - or a part of the topic - investigated by the group activities).

Zeljka Korlevic, Croatia

mravak57 — 2016-11-12 14:27:42 UTC

I have a very little experience in collaborative teaching but I think collaborative work assessment can lower the stress for students and I find it encouraging

Daniel Caridade, PT

dcaridade — 2016-11-12 15:00:55 UTC

Whenever I use group/collaborative projects in the classes, I allow my students to pick their own teams, while holding them responsible for their choices, explaining them that the assessment will target their work progress and the outcome of their collective work. I also clarify that the evaluation will be the same to all group members according to their common choices and realizations. Previously I used to evaluate each student on their own doings, finding out that usually collective products would become unbalanced, since faster and more intuitive students would speed up their work process leaving weaker or slower students behind, breaking up the collaborative commitment. By sharing the assessment their commitment is stronger to the project and to the collective work process improving on all of their experiences within the project.

Lívia, PT

2016-11-12 15:12:46 UTC

It sometimes discourages students because the work is not balanced. Teachers overvalue tests due to educational policies and assessment rules defined by schools. Probably, it would be avoided by implementing scores for collaborative work in summative assessment. Not only collaborative work, but also other type of work developed by the students. The truth is we can do that. We can give % to every type of work and assess it. We shouls assess for success and not for insuccess. The assessment at my school is considered brief, clear and timely for teachers who clearly know what they are doing, but not for students. We forget every student learns differently. We tend to leave collaborative work behind and we don't often take it into account.

Astrid Hulsebosch

AstridVE — 2016-11-12 15:31:56 UTC

I try include formative assessment but you need time! It's an important choice to make and I think that if you have some other colleagues who share the same objectives it would be more easy

Emilia, Romania

Emilia_T22 — 2016-11-12 16:43:05 UTC

I think, sometimes, assessment of collaborative work discourage students.It depends on the group members, how balanced is the group, what is their level.I rarely do such type of activity, assessing group.To avoid this thing and encourage competition , a good idea would be to use checklist, self-assessments and rubrics.Feedback should be clear, done immediately after the presentation/tasks.

Arminda Pereira, Portugal

armindapereira1 — 2016-11-12 16:52:26 UTC

In my classes I use three types of assessment, each with a different purpose: Formative Assessment, Self-assessment and Summative Assessment.

Formative assessment help to improve teaching strategies and how students study because it provides very contextualized feedback both to students individually and to groups,as well as to their teachers.
I use simple assessment tools to formative assessment and the goals are clearly defined. The students realize the importance of the selected assessment tools, and acknowledge their value. Feedback is immediate, to have direct effect on the learning process, so I use assessment tools which are easy to build, easy to use and provide easy data analysis.

Self-assessment is focuded on individuals and their commitment, motivation, engagement in teamwork and their ability to achieve personal goals. Group goals can be formulated using checklists or progress level scales applied over a pre-defined timeline systematically or at particular milestones while carrying out projects or tasks.

Summative assessment aims to provide a formal academic record of students learning progress and to establish proficiency levels. I use tests, group work, etwinning projects, build blogs and other digital products. I assign a weight to each of them in the final summative assessment, so as to take account of students work as a whole.
It is crucially ensuring that students are involved in defining the assessment model.

Angela Italy

luriboni — 2016-11-12 17:01:15 UTC

The assesment of collaborative work is not easy to do.I think it is important to use all kinds of assesstement especially formative and self-assessment to avoid discouraging students or encouraging competition

Raul Coutinho

2016-11-12 18:20:45 UTC

I basically use the FORMATIVE ASSESMENT, because it is one that has a controlling function and is carried out throughout the academic period, in order to verify if the students are achieving the objectives.
It is through tis assessment that the student becomes aware of this mistakes and correctness and finds stimulation for the next phase of the programming. This assessment is guiding, is motivating because it avoids the tensions caused by evaluations.

Carlos Peixoto, Alijó, Portugal

2016-11-12 18:23:09 UTC

In my classes I usually use four modes of assessement: the diagnostic, formative, summative and self-assessement. I believe that the most important are undoubtedly the diagnostic and the formative, however to formalize a final assessement it is important to carry out moments of summative evaluation. Self-assessment is without major doubt, however we need to instill and clarify to students what is meant by it, otherwise feedback does not correspond to reality at all.

Merle, Estonia

merle_pahn — 2016-11-12 18:36:12 UTC

When I use group work in my class I use formative and self-assessment. I think its encourages them. Also I use summative assessment (tests).

Conceição Varela / Portugal

conceicao_varela — 2016-11-12 19:31:03 UTC

In my view the major obstacle in the assessment of collaborative work comes from the most performing students who often express their worries that working with a low performance student might endanger their final classification. Once this obstacle is cleared, I don't think that collaborative work encourages competition, especially if the learning activities are planned in order to require the students to share responsibility and for their work to be interdependent. In this way, students are encouraged to work together to obtain the best possible assessment. From my experience with collaborative work, which is not much since we're just starting, I think the best tip I'd offer to others is that the success of any collaborative learning activity is in the careful planning, making sure the activity is designed in a way that leads the students to acquire all the skills that collaborative work has to offer. Finally, yes, the summative assessment we perform at our school takes into account the outcome of all collaborative work performed by the students and they are aware of the way this outcome is included and contributes to their final assessment.

Concetta Drago, Italy

concetta_drago — 2016-11-12 21:47:55 UTC

In collaborative work I usually encourage student and use formative assessment.
In summative assessment of each student in my school it is not taken into account the learning outcomes related to collaborative work.

Chrysoula,Greece

xrysoulazioga — 2016-11-13 06:43:09 UTC

it encourages students, it is the better method

Maria Laura, Italy

mammolimlaura — 2016-11-13 06:53:41 UTC

In my opinion Competiion is not totally negative,as long as it stimulates the desire to do well, to participate and to improve their participation.

Giovanna Wiplinger Croce - Italy

giovywip — 2016-11-13 08:27:21 UTC

It depends on the effectiveness of the teacher's message given to the students. Define clear goals based on their collaborative work and not only on their performance. The harmonious group work must be encouraged as a goal in itself and for students that should be clear. Teacher summative assessment must include their way of dealing with each other and their capacity of overcome relationship obstacles.

Betina Astride, PT

betinaastride — 2016-11-13 09:34:06 UTC

In my point of view, assessment of collaborative work encourages pupils to be better in their work because they know that their partners will talk about how they worked in the group. This does not happen always, but quite a lot. So I can say that is a good competition between pupils.

Majella, Ireland

dempseybrian099 — 2016-11-13 10:49:08 UTC

I think it is very important that we have formative assessment built in to collaborative learning, this can come from the teacher, the student themselves or the peers. There are three actors in the formative assessment process and a number of different processes that can help. We need to develop success criteria with the students at the out set of the work and share these and be willing to adapt them and add to them if the collaborative learning is over a few weeks. This encourages self-assessment and aids peer assessment. We need to be able to engineer rich classroom and group discussions so that learners can build on their understanding in their groups. This may happen organically but I find the teacher must play a role here also.We must model and teach assessment and feedback practices. Yes I do think it is very NB to assess both formatively and for summative purposes. I think portfolios and presentations can be very powerful in bringing together learning from many diverse parts of a collaborative learning process.

Cinzia Billa, Italy

2016-11-13 12:27:09 UTC

I think assessment of collaborative work and assessment of learning are two different but integrating aspects of assessment. Moreover, the former includes product assessment. In the former, as every group member is to take responsibility throughout the whole process, we should guide students in self-assessment, assessment of group working process, evaluation of weaknesses and strong features. The product assessment should be also based on peer reviewing other groups' works. Assessment of learning concerns individual assessment of knowledge and self-consciousness of meaningfulness of what we did together and of what I l(earn)ed!

Cristina Teixeira, Portugal

2016-11-13 13:33:00 UTC

In my class (Physical Education) I don´t think that the assessment of collaborative work discourages students.
Competition sometimes motivate students, especially in collaborative work. If we build team spirit, collaboration will improve, as will the results.
In every lessons I propose collaborative work and everyone has to participate and share responsabilities. The students like to do collaborative work and they help each other because their work's results depends on everyone.
In my class the summative assessment take into account the collaborative work.

Joana, Portugal

joanaconceicao — 2016-11-13 13:39:03 UTC

What I've been experiencing with my class is that assessement contributes to a better self understanding of each

Antónia Brandão e José Ruão, PT

dolores_brandao — 2016-11-13 14:32:17 UTC

After the video and a glance of resource section, we discuss between us the type of assessment we do of our students. The questions that are putted are crucial and the information very useful. We agree that assessment help students to take responsibility of their own learning and may promote collective conscience of the benefits of helping each other. Competition is not always negative and can motivate students if is positive.

We appreciate the distinction between types of assessment and the value that is given to feedback. In fact is very important that a diplomatic, brief , clear and timely feedback can be given to the students.

The rubrics are fantastic tools and the idea of involve students in its construction is very good. To finish this post we want to tell that checklists, simple, short and easy to use can also help teacher work and learning activities

Tina M_Macedonia Greece

tinamellos — 2016-11-13 14:35:59 UTC

My students are highly competitive and prefer working alone to collaboratively; and it gets more prominent when it come to assessing the work done. I try to 'flip' this cause I strongly believe that assessing and being assessed is a process of getting to know oneself as a part in the whole and become more sufficient, better in collaboration.

Eduardo Pinheiro, Portugal

eduardojgpinheiro — 2016-11-13 15:01:34 UTC

In my classes I use gridlines. The gridlines are used also by my students and we debate in classroom about their work (the final product) and about their group work (who was make what?). We reflection about the skills and the collaboration.
The summative assessment at my classes always into account this type of work.

Orsola, Italia

2016-11-13 15:11:53 UTC

Collaborative learning assessment encourages students and responsabilizes them in the learning process.

Domenica Marino, Italy

marinomimma16 — 2016-11-13 15:57:00 UTC

On the Collaborative Teaching and Learning course, I have receive advice as well as concrete suggestions about how to carry out collaborative teaching and learning.I think it is important to evaluate the individual results and the collective ones.However, considering we are seeking to develop collaborative learning scenarios, the emphasis should be put on assessing what leads to the development of team work skills and the results or knowledge achieved by thegroup, much more than evaluating individual successes.I think that using tools like rubric and checklist for self-assessment, proposed in the Guidelines CO-Lab to evaluate the collaborative learning in the classroom, is valuable way to avoid a competition between students. Indeed the use of rubrics is a speedy and interesting way to collect information on progress in learning and provide feedback to stakeholders.The checklist gives the students themselves and other stakeholders (classmates and teachers) a clear idea about their work in a team, to play their role, know and understand the role of other, assess their contribution and that of peers.

Chiara Sabatini/Italy

chisab72 — 2016-11-13 16:04:06 UTC

I'm actually not very good at assessing collaborative work. Thanks to this and other courses I've started to use self assessment and peer assessment so that students can realize what their strong or weak aspects are. About summative assessment in my subject takes into account all the learning outcomes related both to individual and to collaborative works such as all the activities the sts carry out in school projects and etwinning projects.

Nikos, Greece

nikosmouratog — 2016-11-13 16:54:21 UTC

Sometimes both these situations arise. There are students with low self-efficacy and self-esteem who do not like being assessed. Therefore, these kind of students tend to engage more in collaborative learning activities. Perhaps, there is the view that they can hide themselves but eventually their work is great both in quality and in quantity. Discouragement may be noticed only when students preserve a strict and formal assessing procedure and consequently they do not want either to assess or to be assessed. As far as the competition is concerned, that depends on the students and the groups. The most important is to ensure students that through assessment we can improve our work and ourselves in general.
Like immediate feedback, assessment should be brief, clear and timely in order the students to be able to connect these observations with their task or activity. The best way to do so, is to keep a record for each student immediately, during and after the completion of the activity. As for the summative assessment, even though it should take into consideration the collaborative work, however, it does not always happen, as it depends on the tutor.

Odete Pinho

modetepinho — 2016-11-13 16:58:58 UTC

Collaborative work assessment does not encourage competition but teach the students to learn better because they help one another and overcame difficulties. Some teachers at the summative assessment , sometimes, don´t take into account the learning outcomes related to collaborative work because they only assess the individual work this happened because they had no training in this issue.

Rosa Gaspar/Portugal

luisasgaspar67 — 2016-11-13 17:25:24 UTC

The assesment of collaborative work is not easy to do. I think it is important to use all kinds of assesstement especially formative and self-assessment to avoid discouraging students or encouraging competition.

Alena Jandlová

2016-11-13 17:34:43 UTC

I think that my assessment of collaborative work doesn´t encourage a competition inside the group as they are aware of a common output the students are to create. When I assess collaborative work and use summative assessment, I grade all the students in the group, mostly by the same grade.

CÁTIA SANTOS

badkat187 — 2016-11-13 17:58:30 UTC

PORTUGAL
In my case the summative evaluation takes into account the collaborative work. it was defined by the department, all the teachers in my area have to evaluate the collaboration, respect for the colleague ... in addition to the evaluation of the project work itself.

Regarding the encouragement of the students, it depends on the group and the students, there are students who like competition and in this case encourages, but if the difference is too great not encourages, other students do not care about the evaluation.

I believe that the evaluation I perform is clear and brief, it is always done through tables and the learners know the criteria and their score, however after the video I realized that my evaluation does not take into account the motivation to learn in collaboration but for learn in competition And I also do not promote understanding of the evolution of learning, and may be i am discouraging the students, without realizing it. ��0��3��>

Catarina Rodrigues, Portugal

canrodrigues — 2016-11-13 18:57:55 UTC

Assessment of collaborative work is a very difficult thing to do if we want to encourage collaboration.
Beside, I was thought in a competition classroom where we needed to be the best. An, in some extend, this is happening all over the classes nowadays. For parents what really matters are the results their children get in the exams (summative assessment), because that is what students need to enroll a course in the university.
I believe that we can change, but this will take a very long way.

Joana, Portugal

juanagomes — 2016-11-13 20:28:11 UTC

I believe it is our role as teachers to make assessment significant and valuable to our students, helping them regulate their work as individuals and as group.

Silvia Zorzi, Italy

2016-11-13 21:17:48 UTC

In my school, this year we are starting with a new project that involves new methods and tools to assess learning outcomes, especially with collaborative work; it's new for us, but we believe it is essential to change teaching methods to enhance students' learning. Thanks to this course for the very precious tools!!

Pedro Elias, Portugal

pedroelias — 2016-11-13 21:44:35 UTC

In my opinion the assessment of collaborative work can sometimes discourage students or encourage competition. One suggestion would be to make several assessments throughout the various phases of the work. In this way, students would have the possibility to evolve and improve.

Teresa Rowett - Portugal

teresarowett — 2016-11-13 22:52:00 UTC

Indeed for me assessing is the biggest difficulty concerning group work. Perhaps once it becomes a general practice it will become easier but for the time being I can’t help fearing being unfair in some way. Right from the beginning it is difficult to create relatively heterogeneous groups. Almost always there are students who would rather work alone because their main concern is having good marks and they fear their colleagues may be a setback. Also, on the other hand some students may try to work as little as possible and benefit from the work of others. This may in fact discourage teachers from using collaborative work. So I think this is the ongoing challenge regarding collaborative learning, the pupils are still learning to take responsibility for their team work and the teachers are trying to find the best way to assess their work fairly. But we must consider the choice of assessment model according to each project or task. Professor Luís Valente gives us examples of rubrics and checklists, pointing out that they are important because they are very clear instruments for assessment, flexible and effective for self- and peer-assessment. He reminds us that the checklists can be very useful and the simpler they are, the higher their value.

Katarzyna Kwiatek-Grabrska, Pola

2016-11-14 12:18:03 UTC

Assessing the student's work is very important, but it can not just be assessing the degree. The student must receive information about what he did well and on what should still work. Then there is a chance that he wants to work on, knowing that he has a chance, and knowing how. The assessment should therefore be constructive and motivating to continue to work, even if it is initially low.

Mafalda Lapa, Portugal

lapa_mafalda — 2016-11-14 13:03:31 UTC

I think a good assessment always encourages students but I also think that sometimes it encourages competition. It depends on the students and the teacher has a key role here discouranging this behaviours. In my school, the summative assessment take into account the learning outcomes related to collaborative work but sometimes teachers don't use it.

Veronica, Italy

vb_keohane — 2016-11-14 13:22:06 UTC

I think that it is so important to use assessment as a means of encouragement to help students do better. I try to be clear and immediate when I share my considerations with my class. Unfortunately, the emphasis is still on summative assessment in many schools as we are obliged to put marks on registers. I am trying to help my students and myself develop confidence with various digital tools to present their work and this extra indication of their creativity is now a component in the assessment process.

Ana Elisabete Teixeira, Vila Nova de Cerveira- Portugal

anasaojoaoteixeira — 2016-11-14 15:12:39 UTC

I think the evaluation of collaborative work sometimes discourages bad students and encourages competition in good students. However, evaluation should be useful for students to self-regulate their learning process.
It is also important that assessment helps students recognize the benefits of collaborative work and that together they learn more and better.
I agree that the evaluation should be brief, clear and timely.
I use formative assessment more regularly than self-assessment and peer evaluation. It's something I have to change.

Google Translation

Ana Schade, Portugal

ana_vaz — 2016-11-14 15:45:09 UTC

Teachers should provide a large number of assessments, especially formative and self-assessment, to provide students a greater involvement and responsibility in order to avoid their discouragement.
In my school summative assessment includes all types of work done by the students, but in general the evaluation is most of the time about the final product and not the construction process of it.

António Gonçalves, PT

2016-11-14 16:22:30 UTC

Collaborative learning involves multiple skills and is not limited to assessing the curriculum content that normally leads to competition.
In collaborative learning we must also evaluate other skills, such as the ability to interact, to relate, to communicate and to collaborate among them ...
Thus, we must ensure that we have tools to assess the various stages of collaborative learning.
In my collaborative work classes, I try to apply different evaluation tools at different points in the process and always involve the students in the evaluation process.
When the goal is to realize an end product, we do not only evaluate the final product, but also the construction process. We must create several evaluation moments, using objective criteria and perfectly identified by the students so that the evaluation (self and peer-evaluation) is understood as formative and can lead to a better learning.

Alessandra, Italy

alessandra_marini1 — 2016-11-14 17:00:16 UTC

Assessment is the most interesting point to me... this video gives important suggestions on how to assess students' work

Isabel Costa

costaisabel60 — 2016-11-14 17:07:18 UTC

For me, assessment really has to focus its attention on the progress of students, for this it is very important to perform self-assessment, peer assessment and, of course, the final evaluation of the teacher who must be constructive, so as to be able lead the student to do better.
By putting my students to work self-assessing and peer assessing puts me in a problem right now as the school's evaluation criteria assign a higher percentage of value to written tests. For me what has to change is the way it is instilled in students that taking a test is more important than working collaboratively with others.

Lucrezia Di Molfetta Italy

edimol — 2016-11-14 17:20:08 UTC

Collaborative assessment is quite engaging for teachers, as students collaborate in groups in a very different way. The use of rubric can be useful. We can consider asking students for feedback and including some of their ideas to the rubric.
This kind of assessment can help students develop the skills they need to succeed in doing group activities.

Rossella, Italy

2016-11-14 18:14:26 UTC

I believe that introducing the address book in class and share it with the students can be a useful tool for evaluating collaborative learning and concretely help them improve their practices in group activities because it provides an objective feedback

Thomas, Austria

t_schoftner — 2016-11-14 20:25:18 UTC

I think that my role as a teacher when assessing students is mainly that I should give feedback / assess work in a way that encourages students to work on (which is hard enough). I also have realized that some colleagues reduce assessment to tests.

Cinzia Masia, Italy

attasonitabas — 2016-11-14 22:34:26 UTC

I think that assessment can be a frightening word for students. They don't like to be assessed and to do test! Personally, I think that assessment during collaborative work is a little bit difficult because you have to cope with with several different aspects. I usually do summative assessment because our school system requires it!

Antonia, Netherlands

chanja — 2016-11-15 10:21:31 UTC

What I find difficult to see in my students is that a majority of them listen to the feedback you give them during a project or after having done a test but don't actually do something with the feedback. Lack of motivation? Not aware of the importance? Not used to regulate their own learning process?
I also noticed that while working in groups not all students are able to cope with the feedback they get from other group members. Rather than learning from the feedback they feel 'attacked' and start defending themselves. At times a situation is created where students start working individually instead of collaborating.
At this moment the summative assessment in our school for my subject is based on the curriculum. In other subjects collaborative learning is taken into account. Next year I will start a project together with a colleague hoping to encourage collaborative learning. I hope to be able to incorporate all mentioned forms of assessment.

Dulce Freire, Fernanda Cunha, Marco Fernandes and Vítor Silva, Portugal

marcocfernandes — 2016-11-15 11:29:01 UTC

At our school we evaluate students in two domains, attitudinal and cognitive. Each of these domains is assigned a weight on the student's final grade. Within each of these domains we evaluate several parameters, most of them being defined by each disciplinary group and some are imposed by the government. These specific evaluation criteria are approved by the pedagogical council based on the general criteria defined by it. We think that the question that arises when they are defined is centered in the approximation of the same to the national means obtained in final exams than in the student and not in student. In the middle of any of the periods of study we prepare a mid-term evaluation of each student that is made known to the parents. At the end of each term, each student does his self-assessment. The assessment we made nor discourages students nor encourages competition however there are students who by their nature are competitive and this is revealed in the type of work they develop so the competition does not result from evaluation but from the fact that they want to have the best grade that guarantees them access to higher education (we are talking only about students who attend regular courses).

We believe that we perform a brief, clear and timely evaluation.

We also perform formative, diagnostic and summative assessment and give feedback timely to the students. We observe e take note during the process in order to assign an individual classification to the student that “measures” what he has learned.

As we have not yet worked collaboratively between ourselves and the students, as we have already mentioned, this situation is not taken into account in the evaluation. The realization of projects in our school is carried out in the free time of the teachers and students.

Olga Tsaruk, Ukraine

ovotsaruk — 2016-11-15 14:03:55 UTC

I am sure that all kinds of learning activities must be assessed. Students need to know their strengths and weaknesses. In my school summative assessment includes all types of work done by the students

Carmela Cundari - Italy

melcunda — 2016-11-15 16:29:42 UTC

I’m well aware that formative assessment is very important and I try to embed it in every learning activity using very simple techniques, I need it to give my students any scaffolding activity to guide them through the learning process.

About self- assessment I don’t think it’s useful for my students: they are very young (primary school) and whenever I’ve tried to use it I’ve realized that students always believe they did everything perfectly (even if it’s a mess!)

EmíliaSilva

2016-11-15 21:04:03 UTC

Emília Silva - Portugal

2016-11-15 21:04:03 UTC

My students are encouraged when they learn collaboratively, do not compete. Work together for a common purpose. In the assessment the fedback  is brief, clear and timely. I use very simple and free digital tools. Periodically i do the  self- assessment. I use the digital tools SOCRATIVE and PLICKERS. Have direct effect on the learning process. Groups goals can be formulated using checlist. In my school the teachter do not count in summative assessment the collaborative work.

Graça Carvalho - Portugal

graca_carvalho — 2016-11-15 23:24:00 UTC

Students like to help friends who have more difficulty. Easily self-assessment and are very objective in peer evaluation. They recognize their difficulties and the difficulties of their colleagues. From evaluates, they know they are evaluated. But in younger students (7, 8 years) is inevitable competition.

In my school, In the assessment intervene student and teacher. The student who does not know is not limited to being informed of the school results. You are asked for a self-assessment to know what you know and how you know and if the order of procedures to show what you know is the most correct. It is an important moment for the student. This, through reflection on what he knows and does not know, makes it possible for the teacher to reorient strategies for the acquisition of consistent knowledge.

ASSESSMENT PROCEDURES

The modalities of evaluation are: diagnostic, formative and summative.

1. The diagnostic evaluation is applied at the beginning of each school year or whenever it is considered important and aims at obtaining information capable of providing indications for the definition of strategies of pedagogical differentiation in order to overcome any difficulties of the students, facilitating their integration School and vocational guidance.

2. The formative assessment is continuous and systematic, and should be multifaceted in the use of information gathering instruments, taking into account the diversity of learning and the contexts in which they occur, with the aim of regulating the process of teaching learning.

Information gathering instruments are as follows:

. Tests

. Design works

. Experimental works

. Worksheets

. Oral participation

. Attitudes and values observation grids

3. Summative assessment:

It is done at the end of each term, translating the information gathered through the formative evaluation and translates a globalizing judgment about the learning done by the students;

Paola Mattioli, Italy

pmattioli — 2016-11-16 17:29:18 UTC

Paola Mattioli, Italy

pmattioli — 2016-11-16 17:29:25 UTC

My students

Paola Mattioli, Italy

pmattioli — 2016-11-16 17:29:32 UTC

My students work in group without problems and it seems they don't need my presence because they help each one need. We use Seesaw to share our

Helene Stavropoulou,

elenistavro7 — 2016-11-16 18:40:09 UTC

Helene Stavropoulou

elenistavro7 — 2016-11-16 18:40:12 UTC

Helene Stavropoulou, Greece

elenistavro7 — 2016-11-16 18:40:23 UTC

No, it is only rarely that my evaluation of collaborative work discourages students ... because their collaborative work is often very satisfactory. Moreover, in my view it is not a fishery to encourage competition between groups. There is no harm in exploiting - with moderation - the positive and motivating side of the competition.
I believe that the advice offered by the video is ideal to avoid the discouragement of the students.
To some extent, yes, the summative evaluation of each student in my school and subject takes into account learning outcomes related to collaborative work (such as project work / results). Unfortunately this does not happen systematically, objectively so it is not reliable enough. And that's the problem with the assessment of collaboratve work. I hope the experts will give us answers to this

Maria Concetta Catalano, Italy

cettinacatalano644 — 2016-11-16 20:14:44 UTC

I agree with John Dewey that defines school a thumbnail community. He argues that learning includes intellectual, emotional and social events. Experience in my classes, says to me that in order to avoid the frustrations students have to share the indicators of the evaluation.

Palmira Serrano, Portugal

palmiraserrano — 2016-11-16 20:20:26 UTC

My students work much more motivated, engaged and interested when the work is in team and their assessment does not discourage them, it helps them to improve for the next work.
The sumative assessment in my school is based on two components: Education for Citizenship and Knowledge / Capabilities, and take into account collaborative work as group work (10%).

Katarina,Serbia

2016-11-16 22:51:01 UTC

Formative assessment is important and I used it in most of learning activities with my students with disabilities.But self-assessment I don`t use because I think it is not useful for them .They are young and think that whatever they worked is good.

Carla Mansilha - Portugal

cmansilha — 2016-11-17 07:36:21 UTC

“Assessment should encourage students to learn collaboratively and not encourage competition.”: True, but not always easy to do...

Lucia, Italy

lustri55 — 2016-11-17 16:14:29 UTC

On the basis of my experience I can say that, unfortunately, the summative assessment doesn't give enough value to collaborative work even if it plays a very a very important role in the learning process. We tend to evaluate oral or written performances related to the knowledge of the content , grammar accuracy, vocabulary and so on instead of considering also the ability to work in a team, to cooperate, respect ideas, give their contribution to solve problems.......

Giovanna, Italy

giovanna_biceg1 — 2016-11-17 18:58:59 UTC

Why not encourage competion between different groups working on the same topics rather than between members of the same group?
This can improve the results of each group

Ana Chambel, Portugal

aachambel — 2016-11-17 21:17:01 UTC

Evaluating collaborative work is a rather difficult task and sometimes it tends to become a little bit encouraging in competition, but I tend to encourage some competition in the classroom as I try to make it as healthy as possible. The assessment of the collaborative work that I usually do is mostly based on the evaluation of peers and the evaluation of the final outcome of the process.

Maria Rizza/ Sicily

rowri — 2016-11-17 21:26:22 UTC

Assessment of collaborative work should not start competetion, although it happens, especially when the groups are etherogenous, the weaker students feel disadvataged in comparison to good learners.Competition could be avoided only if grades were not so important for the students future academic career. However it would also help if competition would not exist among teachers, too.As for the kind of assessment I carry out I have to admit that I am not so good at preparing them as it is pointed out in a very detaied way in the Co-Lab guidelines provided in the resource section of this course . I mean to say that the material I have read in this course and the advice given to me are very useful for me to improve my daily work. Of course, I carry out formative assessment and summative assessment, and I personally take into account my students outcomes as well as more traditional forms of tests, However I realize that I have not used checklists and rubrics in the past, so now I have learnt the importance of this assessment tools and I will experiment them to improve this phase of students learning. I will also try to carry out self assessment "1?�1�C��

Paula Duarte, Portugal

2016-11-18 00:44:06 UTC

I have some difficulty in assessing students who work with these new pedagogical learning. It is difficult to assess fairly the work group and students also feel that. But my assessment of collaborative work encourages competition. Students like to feel the adrenaline of competition and view evaluation as the result of a game. For me, the best way to evaluate collaborative work is the self-assessmente of the work developed in the group and the evaluation of the groups among them.

Yes, the summative assessment of each student in my school/subject take into account the learning outcomes related to collaborative work (formative assessment).

Lorraine Cardona

lockycardona — 2016-11-18 10:59:59 UTC

Natália Ferreira, Portugal

2016-11-18 17:30:13 UTC

The formative assessment I carry out is brief, direct and immediate, often through digital resources. Thus, I and the students get information about the lessons learned, which allows us to make corrections immediately.
In my school summative evaluation takes into account all the work developed by the students and they know from the beginning the weight of each element of evaluation.

Cesare Maramici, Italy

2016-11-18 19:08:55 UTC

The formative assessment is rarely related to collaborative work in my school.
It is very difficult assess the collaborative work in a group, many students tend to be in charge to the leader of the group and collaborate only occasionally,
It is easier to assess the product of a group and compare it with the result of the other groups.

Laurentina Soares, Portugal

2016-11-19 11:50:35 UTC

I have some difulty in assessment the colaborative work, because there are different students in different groups. This can be bad for some of the desmotivated students.
The sumative assessment in my schooltake into acount the learning outcomes.

Giuliana, Spain

2016-11-19 13:06:10 UTC

I find it difficult to assess collaboartive work , especially when you have a big number of groups and work is done partly in class and partly at home. I don't encourage competion within the groups but I certainly try through self assessment grids and peer assessment to evaluate the individual amount of commitment.

Evi Karella-Greece

spevispevi — 2016-11-19 15:55:09 UTC

In Pre-primary school, and especially in the cognitive field, there is no place for traditional forms of assessment; on the contrary, they have to be replaced by alternative ones, like:
A. the progress and results of work plans,

B. peer assessment of the team by the children themselves,

C. the child’s portfolio. (source Eyridice)
Assessment in kindergarten based on students' portfolio in which we capture evidence of students learning and development.For example, samples of students' work, video recordings and photos of an event, an activity, of free play, students' individual comments about a topic, a questionnaire with parents' comments, suggestions and observations.

Rui Vieira, Portugal

miguelvieira_com — 2016-11-19 16:03:53 UTC

I find collaborative activities evaluation very useful, for the teachers and also students.

Nevertheless, the definition of an evaluation method itself is sometimes hard, but it should be constant and progressive. There are many aspect that should be taken care: the students age, the students number group, the existing tools, the programs of the subjects…

Nazaré Firmino, Portugal

nazare_firmino — 2016-11-19 16:27:33 UTC

I think sometimes, if some students do not invest as much as others in collaborative work, and this is not reflected in the final assessment, this may cause some demotivation in the more workers. To avoid this situation, I can differentiate in the final evaluation who stood out the most in the investment made at work. But this method can be fallible because I can often get a wrong perception if I can not often observe the work dynamics of the group. On the other hand, by doing this, I can encourage competition between students when they know beforehand that they can have a superior evaluation of their peers. To avoid this, I assign a greater weight to the final evaluation of collaborative work. Before starting the work, I always let the students know the evaluation criteria and their weights. All types of evaluation are presented in grids, with well-defined parameters and with a very explicit quotation. Several moments of self-assessment and hetero-evaluation help to regulate the performance of group members. In my school collaborative work is considered in summative evaluation, when it occurs, which can happen only once a year.

Maria Tomaz, Portugal

anjostomaz1 — 2016-11-19 17:38:32 UTC

The assessment has to take into account the starting point of the students and the skills and knowledge they acquire throughout the learning process. If the evaluation parameters are defined with the students, they can understand how to manage and organize their own learning and what is expected of their performance. Other important aspect to consider is the hetero-evaluation , when the students present the positive aspects and suggestions for improvement in the work of other colleagues.
When we evaluate the process and the product obtained with these strategies, we debate with the question of the evaluation of the exams that only takes into account the summative evaluation.
It is not easy to apply this methodology in years of examination, but I am sure that it is possible, if we increase collaborative work and joint planning among the teachers who teach these levels of education.

Marina ,ItalyEvaluation in collaborative work

2016-11-19 21:23:25 UTC

I think that the teachers give the roles to the students it's easy to evaluate the contribute into the gropu to build the final products

Virginia Esteves, Portugal

virginiaesteves — 2016-11-19 23:44:25 UTC

For me assessment is always the worst part in education! Formative assessment can help the students to go on the right way if the feedback is brief and clear it can be really effective. Self-assessment is important so that students can think about how they are doing in their activities. Summative assessment is the hardest !

Ariana Vacaretu, Romania

ariana_vacaretu — 2016-11-20 12:13:07 UTC

Assessment of collaborative is important and I don't think it encourages competition. Assessment should be also for learning - so, if we want to teach the students how to collaborate, we should assess their collaborative work.
The summative assessment of each student may take into account the learning outcomes related to collaborative work.

Münevver, Turkey

2016-11-20 14:51:41 UTC

Because I haven’t used a rubric that is developed meticulously, I do not have an idea about assessing students’ work with grades. Since, in our country, Summative Assessment is generally more important than Formative or Self-assessment. So, we do not give grades for their collaborative work one by one. However, I try to give feedback to my students in order to make them understand their strength and weaknesses and develop themselves during their education process. Though I tried hard, in the past, I sometimes felt that some students were discouraged from their feedbacks. They believed that they had done their best during the process but couldn’t have 90 or 95 points from 100. These good performers in the group believed that low permorfers can endanger their task’s total quality. If we can manage to fight against this opinion, I believe that students will not compete with each others.
From the video I have learned that “It is crucial that assessment doesn’t discourage learners, but rather strengthens their commitment to learning. Assessment should encourage students to learn collaboratively and not encourage competition. It should also contribute to a collective conscience promoting the belief that we learn better in groups because we can overcome our difficulties more easily when we help one another.” So, from now on I will be more careful about effective participation, a good behaviour, the ideas the bring to the project, the way they organize the work, motivation, awareness, regulation their learning process, coping with the feedback from other group members etc. Moreoever, assessment should be brief, clear and timely in order to be able to connect observations with their tasks or activities. As a result of this, I need to keep regular records for students.
As for the third question, in our school each student gets two exam grades and also two oral exam grades. They also get two more grades from teachers and these grades depend on their studies and works throughout the semester for their classes. But not all the teachers give collaborative works or projects to students to assess them, which is not fair. But some teachers apply it and they take into accout the outcome of collaborative work performed by the students. From now on, I will be more careful about the assessment of students’ collaborative works.

Cristina Abegão

2016-11-20 16:28:27 UTC

I don't think assessment encourages competition. I think it's more imporant formative assessment and self-assessment because students are helped to go on the right direction and can think about how they are going in the time they're doing the work.

Cristina Parente, Portugal

CrisParente — 2016-11-20 17:54:35 UTC

Assessment of collaborative work encourages students to do better and discourages competition. I encourage my students to assess their work and their peers' work as well. The assessment I carry out is clear and timely. My students usually assess what they have learnt and what they need to improve at the end of each class. When they collaborate with each other they evaluate themselves and each other. Regarding the asummative assessment, it takes into consideration students'writing, speaking, listening and reading skills, their performance and attitudes throughout the learning process, namely their learning outcomes related to project work. Let me tell you that students really like collaborative work: they help each other, they feel more self-confident, motivated and more involved in the laerning activities and they make an effort to do much better .

Harisa, Greece

terxara — 2016-11-20 19:38:27 UTC

I think that not just the assessment of collaborative work but the collaboarative work itsself requires extra effort from the teacher. The activity must be well designed and the rubric is necessary. In my country collaborative learning is up to the teacher. If a teacher does not want to involve there is no one to force him to do it. The summative assessment in my country doesn't take into accont collaborative work. As i said collaborative work is optional.

Elisabete Gouveia, Portugal

2016-11-20 23:20:59 UTC

In my opinion, assessment of collaborative work is important and has to focus is attention on the process of students: self-assessment, peer assessment and final assessment of the teacher. We must know the starting point of the students, the skills and knowledge they acquire during the learning process. The supervising teacher has an active and construtive role in the learning process, because it's not easy to apply this methodology but I'm sure that's possible if we increase collaborative work.

Isabel Cabo

isacabo_1978 — 2016-11-20 23:50:56 UTC

I think assessment of collaborative work is very important because it evaluates the learning process: skills and attitudes. In my case, the assessment that I carry out is brief, clear and timely. I apply exams to evaluated foreing languages competences. The summative assessment of each student in my school isn´t related to collaborative work, because I use only exams.

Mafalda Basto, Portugal

2016-11-21 11:12:24 UTC

At my school, the summative assessment stems from the application of criteria that integrate several evaluation instruments, among which are tests, that in elementary and middle school weigh between 50-60% in a subject’s final grade, whereas in high school they weigh between 60-70%. Although work in pairs and groups is contemplated, I think there’s an important road to travel regarding the assessment of collaborative work.

Irena, Poland

irenagd — 2016-11-21 20:55:08 UTC

Teaching English I assess my students individually and for their group work. It is easier when I test their knowledge gained duringthe school year. For group work I try to set transparent rules which reflect their engagement in the final product , their creativity. Every time it comes to assess group work I ask their members to rate their and others' engagement. Getting to know clear rules before the project students feel more responsible for final outcome and sharing duties is for them easier. Of course sometimes it is discouraging for them because they do not like being assessed by their classmates. The key to success lies in convincing them that their affords are worth involving.

Jose, Portugal

jafscruz — 2016-11-21 23:40:10 UTC

Collaborative activities with self integrated evaluation is essential, otherwise the activity for it self doesn't have intention of learning. It's important for all actors in the process, teacher and students. The important thing to have in mind is the aim. So, we need to stablish goals and achivement to endorse correctly what to assess for the activity.

Honorata Pereira, Portugal

honoratapereira — 2016-11-22 00:16:13 UTC

In collaborative work the first question that arises is: What to assess?
It is necessary to take into account that in the collaborative work the teacher does not only assess competences, but also evaluates skills and abilities.
When my students develop a group work, the problem is first defined, then in order to find the solution, set goals, develop methodologies, analyze the results and yake conclusions.
Thus, the teacher assesses whether or not the goals were achieved; how the goals were achieved and what the contribution of each members of the group.

Patrizia, Italy

patrizia_brion — 2016-11-22 16:03:01 UTC

Assessment of collaborative is important and I didn't encourages competition. Assessment should be also for learning. If we want to teach the students how to collaborate, we should assess their collaborative work.
The summative assessment of each student must take into account the learning outcomes related to collaborative work.

Ionela Lazea, Romania

kameeliah16bis — 2016-11-22 16:56:27 UTC

I don't think assessment creates competition. I teach in kindergarten and we don't have grades, so children are not used to a classification after these criterias.

Fayna McNulty, Spain.

faynally — 2016-11-22 17:58:46 UTC

Peer and group assessment are very good options to assess collaborative learning. You are not only evaluating the students´ level of learning adquisition but also the social skills they have managed to develop suring their teamwork.
It is true what it is said in the video: sessions should really be collaborative for those assessment to be effective.
But, my weak point here is how to assess single student´s level of knowledge and social skills adquisitions? Interdependence, being an important part of collaborative learning, makes it difficult to me to assess each student individualy, as in the end, we need to grade them personaly.

Anna Bormida

annabormida — 2016-11-22 19:56:32 UTC

Genova, Italy
At the moment I haven’t assessed collaborative work. I’m going to try it and I’ll try to develope formative assessment in order to improve collaboration and not competition.

The other part is how to assess individual and the learning outcomes related to collaborative work, but this part is very hard in my experience. In my school teachers don’t use collaborative work a lot, so I can’t share my opinions with other collegues. I hope we can improve this kind of teachin because I’ve found it very useful for students motivation and work.

Amélia, Portugal

ameliamagalhaes — 2016-11-22 23:34:44 UTC

“It is crucial that assessment doesn’t discourage learners, but rather strengthens their commitment to learning. Assessment should encourage students to learn collaboratively and not encourage competition. It should also contribute to a collective conscience promoting the belief that we learn better in groups because we can overcome our difficulties more easily when we help one another.”
Our students work much more motivated, engaged and interested when the work is in team and their assessment does not discourage them, it helps them to improve for the next work.
The final sumative assessment in my school is based on two components: Education for Citizenship and Knowledge / Capabilities, and take into account collaborative work as group work

Sandra Teixeira, Portugal

2016-11-23 10:08:48 UTC

Collaborative activities with self integrated evaluation are important, otherwise the students might think that the activities for it self doesn't have intention of learning. It's important that all participants in the process, teacher and students, have in mind the aim. So, it's fundamental stablish goals to correctly evaluate the activity.

Francisco Pinto

2016-11-23 12:07:16 UTC

Collaborative work is always one of the best ways to work by learning, with others, and by helping them. I do not think it encourages competition. In my school collaborative work is not evaluated. The cooperative work is evaluated with a minimum weighting in the final evaluation of the discipline.

Marina/Italy

marina_bottacin — 2016-11-23 14:03:38 UTC

I think assessment of collaborative work should increase fair competition and make them feel responsible for their work in the group. Some students need to be stimulated, others in a sense contained. We have to assess this point as well to make the students understand the importance of it.

Anna Maria, Italy

mattielloannamaria — 2016-11-26 21:25:03 UTC

I think that assessment of collaborative learning is not easy and that is one of the reason I enrolled this course. It is difficult for me to assess group work having in mind all different members of the group. In my opinion group assessment should be the same for each member of the group, but a lot of my collegues don't agree.

Monika Nemeth /Hungary

2016-11-27 16:58:13 UTC

I think my assessment of collaborative work encourages competition The assessment is brief, clear and timely. In my subject take into account the learning outcomes related to collaborative work (such as project work/results)

If conducted appropriately, the collaborative learning assessment can only encourage students, making them aware of the learning process.

paulina_rozmus — 2016-11-27 21:19:12 UTC

Themistoklis, Gre

txronop1 — 2016-11-29 22:49:46 UTC

Assessment should encourage students to learn collaboratively and not encourage competition. To avoid encouraging competition we have to promote the belief between the students that they learn better in groups since they can overcome their difficulties more easily helping one another. The assesment I have to carry out in projects in my school is based on grades and it takes into account mostly the work/results of each group and each individual.

Marian Dragomir

2016-12-13 08:48:51 UTC

Whatever form of assessment you use, it's important that students know what will be looked at.

Ahmet Faruk YILDIRIM - TURKEY

ahmetfaruk76 — 2017-11-03 06:39:29 UTC

Every year either in our school level or regional level there are 3 competitions that every school take part in.İn our school we specify assessment criteria of projects every year.These assessment include criterias either individual or as a team in each project group. But we never used rubic inassessment of the project .This method is wonderfull.