Assessment in Higher Education: Group Work
This third entry in our Assessment in Higher Education series focuses on group work and small group teaching. Whether we run labs, lead recitation sections, or teach our own classes, small group work is a fantastic way of complimenting other teaching methods like lecturing or class discussions.

In last month's article on assessment we discussed the "Seven Pillars of Assessment for Accountability" (Shulman 2007 as quoted in Nuhfer 2007), which bear repeating:

1. Become explicit about the story you need to tell and the rationale for choosing it.
2. Locate the instrument in a larger conceptual framework that explicitly stipulates what it does measure and what it does not.
3. Design multiple measures.
4. Work on combining multiple measures.
5. Remember that high stakes corrupt…assessment of course learning gains need not entail an exercise in high-stakes evaluation of individuals.
6. Embed assessment into ongoing instruction.
7. Become an active and collaborative site for research on new forms of assessment.

Small group work and teaching are a very effective assessment strategy that is not high stakes (principle 5), are part of ongoing instruction (principle 6), and can be part of your larger framework for assessment that is specific to student-centered learning (principle 2). There are a variety of ways that small group discussions can be used to assess student understanding of course materials. These will be discussed at the end of this article.

Why group work?

By breaking up our class into smaller groups to perform tasks, students are able to connect what they learned in lecture or lab and find new ways of approaching the material through discussion and presentation of ideas in a more personal context. Not all students learn the same way, and so while some students will understand the material from lecture or lab immediately, others need more discussion time. Small groups allow students who have mastered the material to explain it to those who do not understand—helping both students in the process. Small group work also helps students develop other skills that are important for their general intellectual development.

Discussion Goals

When designing assignments for small group work, it is vital that you identify a clear purpose for the exercise. The exercise can be used for a number of purposes, including:

• Substitution for lecture—small group work can be used to review materials presented in previous lectures and critique readings. Consider the following example:

[In] the middle of a module on extinction of tribal customs on the Pacific Northwest coast of the United States, an anthropology professor has had students read an article by an animal behaviorist about how whales should not be hunted, even though this has been the tribes’ custom for generations. It may be much more exciting for this professor to turn over the critique to students in small groups and assess what more needs to be said after the groups are debriefed than for the professor to plod through critiquing the article in front of the class (Arvidson 2008: 32)

As a TA, we can use these strategies in recitation sections or our own classes to provide an opportunity for students to critically analyze multiple sides of an argument and present their ideas to the class.

Preparing Students for Assignments—If you have a difficult or complicated assignment, problem set, or lab work coming up, consider using small group work to “demystify the expected outcomes of the assignment or to motivate students to start working on it” by “lead[ing] students through part of the process of the assignment, which can be either part of the thinking required to successfully complete it, part of the writing needed, or both” (Arvidson 2008: 32-33).

Group Work as an Assessment Strategy

In order to stay on task, students should be made accountable for what they do in group work. This is where group work becomes an effective assessment strategy. Give a group a specific task to perform and then report back in class. Have one student take notes and then post them on Sakai for the whole class and, subsequently, have all students take notes and post them on Sakai about the different aspects of the group project.

There is almost no limit to what you can do with small group work. Other ideas for group work are available in the TA Handbook, specifically the section on Students in Groups.

If you have questions, comments, or suggestions for group work activities, please contact us.

Bibliography and Additional Resources

Arvidson, P. Sven. 2008. Teaching Non-Majors: Advice for Liberal Arts Professors. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

Higgs, Bettie, and Jacqueline Potter, editors. 2008. In At the Deep End—Starting to Teach in Higher Education. Cork, Ireland: The National Academy for the Integration of Research and Teaching and Learning (NAIRTL).

Nuhfer, Edward B. 2007. "Assessment of Content Learning: Knowledge Surveys and Concept Inventories and Shulman’s Pillars." The National Teaching & Learning Forum. 16(3): 8-11.

————. 2004. The Teaching Assistant Handbook (Fourth Revised Edition). New Brunswick, NJ: Teaching Assistant Project (Graduate School-New Brunswick).

Shulman, L.S. 2007. "Counting and Recounting: Assessment and the Quest for Accountability." Change. January/February, 39: 20-25. Accessed 23 October 2008.

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