Grading Collaborative Writing in the College Classroom

We’ve all witnessed the reactions to mention of the dreaded group project.  Worse still, the deafening collective gasp of shock when talk of a collaborative paper is thrown in the mix.  It’s no secret that college students fear group assignments, and with the difficulties of scheduling meetings, separating work, and relying on complete strangers to do their portion of the project with as much vigor and studious focus as one would do it individually?  Well, needless to say, it can be a stressful concept.

In fact, I can remember back to my first college group paper, and the ultimate betrayal I felt when I stayed up night after night researching, organizing, and writing, only to find out that my other group members waited until the day before it was due to do their own portions.  Then, it’s like some sort of unwritten code among the student body (especially in freshman level courses, mind you) to make sure that everyone gets an adequate grade on the peer evaluations.  The peer pressure in that alone is enough to make one question why they didn’t just do the entire project on their own from the get-go.

So, amidst all of this struggle, one question remains:  how is it possible to adequately and fairly grade a collaborative group project or paper?

An article released by Carnegie Mellon listed the different options concerning individual grading on a group scale.  One of these options was to have each student write a reflective journal piece to hand in with their group work.  This journal includes the things they struggled with individually with the project and how they overcame those struggles, and then also discusses the overall contributions of each group member, how often the group met before handing in their project, and any other details students might like to share with you concerning the completion of the project.  If you are planning on utilizing this type of assessment, make sure students know that their responses in these journals will remain confidential, and only you will be reading them.  Other ideas included individual quizzes or exams after group papers have been handed in to make sure all members of the group were equally fluent on the content their paper or project addressed.

If you’d like to be a little more personal with your assessments, and the class size isn’t too daunting, have students schedule individual conferences with you to discuss how the collaborative side of things went.  That way, you can take notes, and it enables you to discuss the importance of group roles within your classroom beforehand.  If students enter a project knowing that they will have to face you with information on their contribution, and that others will be telling you directly about their contributions as well, chances are they will be at least slightly more motivated to put their fair share of effort forth.

It's also strongly recommended that you never give a flat group grade to every person within the group.  Since students tend to split work among themselves in order to then bring their pieces together to create a larger cohesive piece, it might be beneficial for group members to label portions they personally are able to take credit for before handing in the finished product.  That way, you are able to better assess individual portions as well as take into account the finished product as a whole.  Utilizing a rubric that hosts point values for both the collaborative and individual aspects separately will help make grading and providing feedback seamless and consistent.

Tip Provided By:  Jessica Moser

Active Learning Activities - Louisa Rice, History

In general, generalities are never all that useful. This is primarily due to the fact that the person relaying the generality usually rarely has any specific details to support the generalized statement. I’d give examples, but then I’d actually disprove my point. Dr. Louisa Rice, Department of History, tackles the issue of student-produced generalities by constructing a close-reading active learning activity that gets students to dive into specifics:

Setting: Close reading activity utilizing pod groups (11 pods with 4-6 students per pod)

Setup for the activity: The class focuses a great deal on the ability to complete a close reading of historical documents (often to "figure out" what those old words actually mean or imply). There are many of these documents in the textbook, and they are all no longer than one page. Students were assigned these 1 page documents on multiple occasions as part of their reading preparation for class; sometimes there were accompanying quiz questions, sometimes there were not. Prior to the class in which we would discuss the assigned document I scanned the page and made it into a PDF which I then posted onto the "news" section of D2L. Theoretically, then, the students had read the document and contextual information before they came into class (although some had not). They could then access a PDF version of the document at their pod when they came into class.

How the activity unfolded in the classroom: In class, I would lecture a little on the context of the document and then asked students to complete some annotations on the document as a group (we went over the Adobe annotating tools a few times in class). Usually this involved a series of questions that I put onto a PowerPoint slide (so that they could still see the questions on the large screen while they completed the work as a group on the small screen). The questions varied, depending on the source, but they all asked them to mark-up the document. For example, for work on a document by Christopher Columbus—his first reflections upon arrival in the United States, I asked them to highlight where the audience for the document was indicated, and underline places in the text where Columbus is revealing a motive in producing the document. Finally I asked them to decide as a group which of the motives revealed (denigrating the indigenous people, claiming a Christian mission, identifying riches) seemed to be the most influential or important, and to explain that importance in a sentence as a textbox on the document. In other documents I asked them to highlight important words (for example, in poem written about World War I) or to underline phrases where the meaning was unclear to them.

After the activity: Students completed the work and saved it to their group locker in D2L—so that I had a record of this (ungraded) work and also so they could return to their group commentary to study for exams. In class, I often pulled up one response on the large screen and then asked whether other groups reached similar conclusions. This normally produced a larger group discussion on what we should take-away from the document and enabled me to connect their conclusions or questions back to the larger theme or argument of the class period.

Additional comments from instructor: "Prior to the version of the activity described above, I asked students to bring the documents to class for discussion and often they did not do that. Usually our discussions were based on the "general" ideas they had discerned from the documents, not the specific details (often very relevant) of the author's writing. This way, I was actually getting them to really READ the texts closely, and I think versions of this exercise would work really well in any class where textual analysis was important."

Tip provided by: Louisa Rice
Write-up by: Jon Pumper

Active Learning Activities - Teresa Sanislo, History

The "Active Learning Activities" series will focus on what its name suggests: activities provided by our very own professors to be utilized in active learning classrooms. This post presents Dr. Teresa Sanislo’s undertaking of a semester-long collaborative writing project she assigned in her history class.

Setting: Paper/project utilizing pod groups (10 pods with 5-7 students per pod)

Setup for the activity: Students work in groups in my class online and in class. They write a group paper together analyzing what is the most important factor bringing Hitler into power. This is a theme that the class prepares for throughout the first half of the class. Students have the paper topic and 7 possible factors to work on at the beginning of the semester. Throughout the semester, we work on the question of how Hitler became chancellor of Germany and focus on the 7 different factors that students could write on. We have an in-class debate on this topic right before the midterm. Student groups decide which factor they will focus on for their paper. Students then write individual drafts of the paper and submit them to the D2L dropbox and a D2L discussion forum. They discuss their drafts both online and in-person (in class) and weave the strong elements of their individual drafts into a group paper. The group produces 3 drafts of the group paper and discusses the drafts before submitting the paper to a D2L dropbox.

Students sign up for specific tasks to help produce the group paper. Weavers examine the individual papers, discuss their strengths and weaknesses with the whole group and then create the 1st draft of the group paper. Supporters check the first draft for strength of argument, logic, and evidence and submit a second draft. Finally, editors go over the 2nd draft for grammar and style issues. The editors submit the final copy of the paper to the D2L drop box.

How the activity unfolded in the classroom: This semester, I used pod group work days to enable students to discuss their drafts and work on improving them together. The work days were in the syllabus and we talked about them in class before they took place. I devoted 2.5 days this semester to group paper work days. Students posted individual papers to the discussion forum and were supposed to discuss their individual drafts in a D2L discussion forum before coming to class for the first day. We devoted one-half of the class period to talking about the paper and having students discuss the preparation of their 1st draft. The groups used the 2nd and 3rd work days to work on various drafts of the paper.
During the work days, students were able to pull up copies of their drafts on the pod computers and work on the paper together in class. During class, I was able to go around to each group to read sections of their papers, make suggestions for improvements, and answer questions. Most students seemed to enjoy working together on their papers in class. A few really seemed to demonstrate a sense of pride in their work and a sense of competition with other groups.

After the activity: Students submitted their final drafts of their paper to D2L following the group work days. The group paper was worth 25% of their grade.

Additional comments from instructor: "I consider group paper work days to be a successful part of the semester. I assigned the group paper the semester before and students seemed quite frustrated about the difficulties of schedule group meetings to work on the paper. This semester, student seemed to appreciate very much the time devoted their projects in class and the help that I was able to give them. Students demonstrated a pride in their work. No one complained about the group paper project in course evaluations, in fact a few stated that they found it to be a really valuable part of the class. The technology really enabled my students to work together and for me to give on-the-spot feedback that they put to use. There are a few changes that I made to this part of the course.

1. I did not require students to see the first draft of the group paper before coming to class to discuss it. So they used much of that day to read the drafts and had less time to work on it. This fall, I made sure that students had to read the first draft and comment on it in a D2L dropbox before coming to class for the work day on the first draft.

2. I expanded the number of work days so we now have 3 full work days for the paper this fall.

3. I made it a requirement that students participate in all online discussions of the paper and attend all group paper work days in order to earn a grade on the group paper. So a few students (only a handful) didn't show up to class on group paper work days and their group was frustrated with them. They were also clearly not fulfilling their rules assigned to them on the task sheet. I had no way of penalizing the students for doing this.

The group paper work days take up three class periods and these are days that I would have devoted to other topics/content. So I was forced to give up covering important themes related to the subject but I feel like it was a good trade off. The group paper and the work days are an important part of the course and I am willing to sacrifice content to make them work."

For additional examples of active learning from UW Eau Claire instructors, follow this link to our website or click on the "Active Learning" tag located on the right side of the blog.

Tip provided by Teresa Sanislo