Partnership with Students: Enhancing group-work pedagogical tools to maximise student learning outcomes in social work

Jane Thomson

Group work is a valuable tool in assisting students to develop skills that are crucial to social work practice. However, group work pedagogy can contain some unexamined assumptions about how assessment is devised and implemented. Students are often assessed in toto as members of learning groups. This approach is frequently challenged by students who raise concerns about equity of contribution to group tasks, and transparency. A considerable variability in student academic abilities is a hallmark of the contemporary higher education environment. This can make problematic an approach that collectivises assessment outcomes even when students may have brought different levels of effort and ability to tasks. The presenter interrogates some of the issues around student difference that can make the collectivised assessment model difficult. She identifies the basis of unexamined assumptions regarding the "one size fits all" approach in assessing students' contributions to group outputs in learning. The partnership in this instance is with students. Academic staff consistently get feedback that students often tolerate but do not value in toto approaches to group-work assessment. This presentation presents a claim for a collaborative approach to assessment in which students and course staff negotiate individual and group elements of a student's grade for an assessment piece. This nuanced model would embrace both the formative/ summative and process/ outcome aims of assessment. This presentation argues that re-invigorating pedagogical endeavour in this area fundamentally aligns with the four USC curriculum design principles for experiences which are learning-centred, standards based, constructively aligned and career and future focused. The ways in which these principles align with a different approach to group-work assessment is explored further in the presentation. The presentation involves a practical and exploratory workshop process. Workshop attendees are asked for some initial impressions of approaches which re-inforce and build on the four USC curriculum principles in relation to assessment innovations. The workshop will develop a draft document to form the basis for a future research study to explore these issues in detail. This further study will be formalised through University processes including a Research Ethics approval. The presentation calls for a re-design which preserves the integrity of group work as a valuable learning tool but fine-tunes assessment to more accurately capture the different abilities of students to meet assessment outcomes in group work. Such a re-design could contribute to an overall improvement in the usefulness of group work in social work pedagogy

Partnership with Students: Enhancing group-work pedagogical tools to maximise student learning outcomes in social work

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