Simon Davis, Mike Dunn and I

Overview/ context

• • Week long “collaborative event” where students work in groups to deliver on a brief provided at the outset. To do so they must complete daily tasks using technology which are automatically mailed to them at the start of the day. A competitive element is embedded throughout the activity with daily leader boards and prize giving at the end.

  • Pilot with ~40 TYMS Masters students within an Independent Study Module

  • Students required to work in groups to produce significant part of assessment.

Who was involved /affected

• • Academic staff / module leaders - owners of learning outcomes for module

  • Support staff

    • IT services T&L team - specialisms in use of Google and developing student digital literacies

    • ELDT, specialism in embedded use of technology in curriculum and learning design

  • Students

What were we aiming to achieve?

• • Support effective student team cohesion

  • Introduce students to use of technology to support collaboration through meaningful activities linked to area of study

  • Develop independent working practices, encouraging students to make critical choices in their use of technology

  • Scaffold development of skills to be developed later in the module

  • Provide an ongoing experience over the course of a week to deliver the above and encourage reflexion during the tasks and reflection afterwards

How did it work?

• 1. Discussions between support and academic staff to clarify rationale and develop an appropriate “metaphor” for collaboration. In this case it was an invitation to pitch for consultancy work through the development of a consultancy firm poster / flyer. This was worked up into the initial brief provided to students at the start of the event by academic staff.

  2. Kick off (1 hour) face to face session in PC room to introduce the tasks, provide basic primer on use of Google apps for Collaboration, create Google Groups for teams and ensure students had done the basics required for subsequent activities (Google group, shared drive and calendar) etc. Groups also required to agree roles to be taken forward in the week including a daily “coordinator”.

  3. Daily collaborative activities are automatically e-mailed to individuals at 7am. Students are required to work in groups to complete a task / tasks that will lead them towards the completion of the final brief. Instructions typically include:

     1. Overview of the task

     2. Deadlines for completion

     3. Structure of the task to support collaboration (eg coordinator creates a doc, everyone then writes in it)

     4. Minimal technical instructions if required or links to online help

     5. Required outputs (eg upload something to your shared Google drive)

  4. Ongoing support / monitoring / encouragement. Support staff maintain an overview of student activity and produce very short overviews for the groups, including daily leaderboards of activity.

  5. Final submission - students submit their completed work to the brief by a given deadline.

  6. Staff and students vote on the submitted work to inform the award of the prize along with final analysis on collaborative effort throughout

  7. Reflective wrap up face to face session and prize giving 1 week after initial launch.

Did it work?

• • High engagement throughout from all groups

  • Feedback from academic staff was positive, commenting that it effectively engaged students, fast tracked group cohesion and appeared to be effective preparation for subsequent assessment activities

  • Focus group feedback from students was broadly positive with students commenting that they enjoyed the activities, found them challenging and rewarding learning experiences. Although there were a number of suggestions for how the activity could be adapted the format of short, daily tasks was generally regarded positively.

  • Survey data with students also highlighted broad positive response and areas for development

  • We do not yet know if / how the skills addressed here manifested in subsequent assessment.

What did the staff learn at programme level?

• • That, next year, we need to advertise that this event was going to happen within the module and that it would require time/commitment/group work.

  • Make the link to the assessment task, and other deliverable and transferable skills, clear and keep stressing them throughout the event (because the output was used by the consultant who came in to help judge their performance in the interview task but the students didn’t believe it was).

  • Having had the experience (and we enjoyed it as staff members, especially the gaming aspect) I think we will be more confident next year and be able to explain and flag the event ahead of time. Students felt, I think, that the week was rather sprung on them without notice.

  • We entered into it with a rather healthy ‘suck it and see’ attitude and were relaxed about the outcomes first time round. We now have enough knowledge, I think, to be more strategic in designing something like this into other programmes/modules.

Implementation lessons learned

• • Make sure groups are created / folders shared with all in the first session

  • Create clear rules about all work to be placed in the folder

  • Make sure you can track what you need to track

  • Think about the offer of dedicated training at mid point - motivation first then training

Could it work for others?

We feel that format could be transferred to other disciplines to support group working skills and digital literacy development. The automated delivery and monitoring of daily tasks could support larger cohorts, though we feel that more “safety net” support would also be beneficial. We have learned a great deal about how this approach could be refined to make it more manageable for staff and students and would look to implement these next time around.

Some of the success factors this time around include:

• • Clear rationale and pedagogic driver

  • Collaborative development with academic staff to embed in the curriculum

  • Link to assessment

  • Daily activities with deadlines delivered over a short sprint

  • Gamification / competition

Simon Davis - E-learning Development Team

Tom Smith, Mike Dunn - Teaching & Learning Team, Information Directorate