3.3 Assessment for improving collaborative learning

Do you think your assessment of collaborative work sometimes discourages students or encourages competition? If yes, how you do think this could be avoided? Is the assessment you carry out brief, clear and timely, and how do you ensure it is so; do you have tips to suggest for others? Does the summative assessment of each student in your school/subject take into account the learning outcomes related to collaborative work (such as project work/results)?

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.

3.4. A sports teacher's experience of assessing collaborative learning

What do you think about the various assessment methods used by Chrysa to assess her pupils’ collaborative learning? Do you think the questions she asked her pupils were helpful in getting them to reflect about their collaborative skills? What do you think about implementing peer assessment with pupils of a young age (6-11 year olds)? Are there special considerations to be taken into account? What about her final question she asks us and our expert to reflect on; do you find it challenging to know how best to assess the individual participation of a student in a collaborative activity?

I agree with her. She informed their students about the evaluation criteria at the beginning of the activity. She created the right conditions in order for them to participate actively in the assessment process and she also tried to see whether there was a cooperative and supportive attitude between the members of the groups.

About the three different factors of evaluation she used: individual performance, group performance and the group’s functionality. She had some doubts about the evaluation of individual performance and I think that if it does not encourages students to competition between themselves it is okay too.

3.5 An ICT teacher’s experience of assessing students’ collaborative learning

What do you think about the projects described by Antonio, from the student collaboration point of view, as well as the teacher collaboration point of view? Do you agree with the 7 benefits Antonio associates to assessing collaborative learning? What about the challenges he mentions concerning group dynamics, team management and the time needed to prepare and implement assessment of collaborative learning in the classroom – are these challenges you also face? Antonio mentions the use of collaborative digital tools, reorganizing the classroom space and introducing more interdisciplinary teaching and the sharing of materials amongst teachers as useful tips. Do you agree and what are your experiences of these suggestions?

António identifies 7 benefits of collaborative learning assessment, but the first one “It is a student-centered process” if he referes the student as an individual, in my opinion should be more focused on the group in a way that they try to achieve an outcome due to their common effort.

3.6 Collaborative learning and student peer reviews

When setting up student groups to work on a project, Anna often leaves students free to decide who they would like to work with and each team member’s role. However, when it comes to peer assessment Anna prefers to use a random name picking tool, as she believes this helps ensure objectivity and is more likely to encourage useful and constructive feedback among peers. Do you agree with these different approaches? Anna mentions a variety of digital tools which are helpful in implementing and assessing collaborative work, such as Edmodo, Scrumy, Tackks, Padlets, Google Forms etc. What are your experiences of these tools?

I agree with Anna’s approaches if you are dealing with students groups with higher ages, in my case (primary school 6/7 years old) I decide the groups formation taking into acount several aspects: responsibility, maturity, work rhythm…

About the digital tools, I have no experience with them when implementing and assessing collaborative work. I have to analyse them and see if they are helpful for my teaching level.

3.7 Collaborative learning - What to assess and how?

Have you ever used existing rubrics and checklists to assess collaborative work? Have you ever constructed your own rubrics or checklists for this purpose? What about involving students in the design of rubrics, checklists or other assessment tools? What have been your experiences? What do you think of the tips given for constructing rubrics and checklists in the video? Are the guidelines and examples given in the CO-LAB Assessment Guidelines useful?

I never used rubrics or checklists to assess collaborative work. Usually I use simple checklists to assess individual work. I have to check the Guidelines and try to construct my own rubrics or checklists to assess collaborative work. I liked the idea of involving students in designing rubrics or checklists.

3.8 Answers to teachers’ questions on assessing collaborative learning

Dr. Luis Valente suggests self and peer assessment can help students to move away from seeing teachers as the only source of judgement about the quality of their learning, thereby helping them to become more independent learners. Do you agree, and what are your experiences of this? He also notes that research shows that self-assessment combined with peer assessment reduces the trend for ‘friendship dependency’, ‘benefit of the dominators’ and ‘benefit of parasitism’. Does this match with your experiences? What do you think of assigning a percentage weight to individual assessment as part of the summative assessment related to collaborative work? Any other thoughts on Dr. Valente’s suggestions?

Self and peer assessment indeed help students to became more independent learners. The teacher is not the only one who evaluates and students having a word on the matter understand better what collaborative work is and their own role in the work group. In relation to self-assessment combined with peer assessment, I agree that reduces the trend for ‘friendship dependency’, ‘benefit of the dominators’ and ‘benefit of parasitism.

3.9 Learning Activity

Start working on creating one or more lesson plans integrating collaborative learning and assessment, which you intend to use with your students in the classroom before the end of 2016 or early next year.
Module 4’s learning activity will be to continue working on your lesson plan/s so that you can submit your final one/s at the end of the course, and implement it/them in practice shortly afterwards.
To design your lesson plan, please use the Learning Designer.
Below is a list of criteria you should consider when creating your lesson plan and to use for your peer review of the lesson plans of two other course participants:
1.The lesson plan includes learning activities specifically designed to develop students’ collaborative learning skills: For example, at least two of the following criteria are included (see module 2 videos and resources – i.e. the 21CLD rubric and the example learning scenarios for further information and inspiration):

Students are required to work in pairs or groups
Students have shared responsibility
Students make substantive decisions together
Students’ work is interdependent
It is essential that the nature of the collaborative activities is fully described in the lesson plan, and clearly refers to one or more of the four dimensions mentioned above.
2. The lesson plan incorporates appropriate assessment tools to assess the collaborative learning activities mentioned, preferably including the student in the design of at least one of the tools: For example, one or more of the following are included as assessment tools (see module 3 videos and resources – i.e. the CO-LAB Guidelines for Assessing Collaborative Learning in the Classroom for further information and inspiration):

Rubric to assess a group
Rubric to assess group members individually
Checklist for self-assessment of students’ collaborative skills
Checklist for peer-assessment of students’ collaborative skills
Digital tools facilitating self and peer assessment of collaborative learning
Mindmaps and infographics to assess group work and facilitate peer assessment
3. The lesson plan is well aligned with its learning outcomes: activities and assessment clearly link with the defined learning outcomes and allow the teacher to determine by the end of the lesson(s) if the objectives have been achieved.
4. The lesson plan is balanced: there is a good mix of activities with at least four different Teaching Learning Activities used (TLAs in the Learning Designer) and none of the Activities, except in the case of collaboration, taking up more than 35% of the time (see the pie chart for this).

3.11 "Questions and Answers" Session with Prof. Deirdre Butler!
My question is: How many times should we implement collaborative learning activities in primary school level during the year?

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