WK 31

Implementing Group Work in Ecology Classes

Although collaborative assignments and projects are recognized as high-impact educational practices, science teaching usually does not employ this practice. Science is a collaborative effort, but until recently, science was rarely taught in a collaborative manner.  This participant-driven workshop will bring together people who are using collaborative assignments and projects in their classes and people who would like to use this practice in their class to share ideas of how to make group work a successful aspect of their classes.  Participants will divide into topic groups, and after discussion, each topic group will report the results of their discussion to all participants.  Participants will have the opportunity to participate in two topic groups.  Topic groups include:

Formation of groups (including size of group)

What activities do you want students to accomplish?

Peer evaluation of the group members

Product produced by group work

Group work connections between lab and lecture

What are the roles of group members and how can the instructor improve group dynamics?

If possible, please let us know in which two topic groups you would like to participate (david.grise@tamucc.edu and abigail_johnson@my.uri.edu).  If you have suggestions for other topic groups, please send them to us and we will try to incorporate them into the workshop.  Our goal is to provide participants with a working knowledge of how to incorporate group work into their classes.