Assessment and Feedback on Introduction of Group Work on M140

Project leader(s): Ruth Neal Kellee Patterson
Theme: Supporting students
Faculty: STEM
Status: Current
Dates: May 2023 to September 2024

The aim of this project is to assess the impact on M140 of introducing group work, gain feedback from students and tutors and learn from this experience before rolling this out to all students. We also wish to learn from this process and disseminate these findings to colleagues and produce a group work assessment framework to take this forward to the STEM community.

This project aims to pilot the introduction of group work on M140 23J, the primary aim is to increase the employability content in M140 by enabling and encouraging students to work in groups to discuss the statistical results they have identified in their own individual results.

TMA04 of M140 already has a seed growing experiment, we propose to introduce a trial of 5 tutor groups of 20 students from M140 23J, 100 students in total, to work in groups to share their data from this seed growing experiment. Their results are shared with their tutor group to discuss problems and provide feedback on their experience.

We propose to develop a shared database and we expect the students to upload their data into this. Using this database, they could analyse the results from all students participating and work together to achieve this. This database can then be used for further analysis either as an activity in TMA04, or by other statistics students.

The goal is to improve students’ confidence in working in groups and to improve their employability skills. We recognise reticence of STEM students to do group work, but this is a requirement for accreditation for many degrees.