Learning and Teaching Strategy update 2008
Faculty of Biomedical and Life Sciences
Associate Dean (Learning & Teaching): Dr R. Aitken (r.aitken@bio.gla.ac.uk)
Title of case study: Facilitation of teamwork activities through the use of Moodle groups
Keywords: Retention, first year, feedback, social integration
Description
Teamwork has been a feature of courses in Biology at Level 1 for many sessions. In recent years,
teamwork tasks have focussed on the preparation of material for a class debate, and assembly of a
poster around which discussion can take place. If teams are to work in a collaborative way, the group
size needs to be relatively small and the students need to be able to meet with reasonable frequency
to negotiate and assign roles within the group, to progress their task and to prepare for delivery. Also,
staff need to be able to monitor and manage groups towards their aims, guarding against drift from the
topic as set, and intervening if conflict arises within the group. Peer assessment is used in these
activities with team members rating the contributions made by others; staff moderation of these grades
needs to have an objective foundation gained from observation of group dynamics and inputs from
individual members of each team.
Although teamwork tasks have an important role in learning and the development of generic skills, a
further benefit is that it provides a framework for social integration amongst students, a process known
to be linked with retention.
The management and delivery of activities delivered through teamwork to the criteria set out above
presents challenges for large classes. In session 2007-08, Level 1 Biology comprised in excess of 750
students. To overcome the logistical obstacles, teaching staff made use of “group” facilities in Moodle
during Semester 1. This provided a private online environment for teams of students to work towards
their goals. Communication between team members taking different courses along different timetables
was eased by online discussion and it was easy for staff to assess relative contributions from different
team members by looking at threads to the online discussions. From this, it was much easier to judge
the validity of peer gradings for the assignment and there were far fewer queries from students about
the grades that were awarded.
Over the period of the exercise, staff logged in excess of 200,000 visits to the groups by students.
Presentations were of the high standard typically experienced and detailed analysis was unable to
identify any gains in grades by students. However, the use of Moodle eased the management of the
exercise from the staff side.
One notable gain was the continued use of the groups by students after the assignments were
complete. Some communication was course-based, some was more social suggesting that the
innovation had helped form “online communities” within the large Level 1 Biology class. We propose
that this aids social integration and the generation of virtual – potentially real – friendship groups.
Conclusion
The success of the exercise was such that it will be used for teamwork activities throughout the 2008 –
2009 session. Setup is time-consuming though this may ease with forthcoming releases of the Moodle
VLE. This inconvenience is far outweighed in our view by the ease with which teamwork tasks can be
managed; this encourages the use of a learning activity that is educationally worthwhile but
problematic to implement for large classes. We see evidence of social integration as of potential
benefit with respect to retention in Level 1 students.