Teaching.IU

Context

For my business law and ethics course, I needed a way to offer students considerable practice on a particular learning activity, but the grading of multiple individual submissions is too burdensome. The main learning goal for ethics requires mastery of an ethical analysis process, in which students analyze an ethical dilemma using tools and techniques learned in the class and come to a supported conclusion. It demands critical thinking, systemic reasoning, and knowledge of the course material; a fairly demanding process to learn and master.

To help with this process, I developed a set of assignments using technology to offer both repeated practice for student learning and reasonable amounts of instructor grading.

Step-by-Step Implementation

I have integrated the use of discussion forums as a way to increase practice opportunities and feedback for the analysis that is a required component of my course. Students post their work on class discussion forums, critique each others’ work, and review all of the instructor feedback on others’ work in the class. This process accomplishes the following: holds students accountable to complete the assigned work; helps them learn through critiquing others’ work; and allows them to benefit from my grading of all group submissions, all accomplished with a reasonable and efficient use of instructor time.

1. Establish groups of students in a size you feel is appropriate for the assignment. I use 4-6 students and have 6-10 groups. Craft the assignment, assignment a case study, or have each group of students select a topic.
2. Each student writes an analysis draft individually for this first round of practice. Each student posts the individual drafts under his/her group’s forum.
3. Each member of the group critiques the work of the other group members. These critiques will be according to the instructor’s grading rubric and/or directions in order to learn the process better individually and also to provide feedback to each other.
4. Each group writes an improved draft together, taking advantage of the progress in learning from each other. This work is to be done as a group, rather than merely a blending of the writings of each person. The group draft is posted under the appropriate thread in a forum named “Group Drafts.” Students submit a peer review of each group member directly to the instructor.
   1. This is the only part of the process performed by groups. It leverages feedback opportunities by requiring feedback from one another, as well as allowing the instructor to invest more time in grading fewer, and presumably better, submissions. With fewer, and presumably better, submissions. With fewer analyses to grade, and the greater quality from the group analysis building on the individual work, the instructor can devote more time to each submission and provide the entire class more in-depth feedback.
5. Each student in the class reads and critiques the work of some or all of the other groups, posting comments in that submission’s thread. Students learn from seeing what is done well and what problems to avoid.
6. The instructor grades each group’s work by typing comments and feedback. I use capital letters and insert comments throughout the text. The instructor should then post feedback under a forum named “Professor Feedback.” Because these critiques are posted, every student in the class is able to benefit from additional guidance and direction from the instructor.
7. Students will use another group’s draft for exam practice. Because my exercise is tested on the final exam, I require students to hold back one of the other groups’ drafts to use as a final exam practice exam. Each student practices the process one more time and posts the final project under a forum called “Last Individual Practice.” (Note, students can practice many times by analyzing all of the case studies before posting the critiques required in step 5 above.) The students can ‘self-grade’ their work by reviewing the group’s submission, student comments, and the instructor’s feedback for that case study or topic.

Effectiveness

This use of technology benefits all involved. Research and my experiences show that student learning and performance increases, without a tremendous work and time commitment by the instructor (Andersen, 2009; Kirk, 2003).

In my classes, student performance on the ethics exam has improved. Previously, students generally performed much better on the law exam (a more traditional essay exam format) than on the ethics exam. Since implementation of this technology, most students performed as well on the ethics exam as on the law exam, with about a third of the class earning higher grades on the ethics exam.

In the years that I have used this method, students have reported positive feedback on teaching evaluations, with no negative comments. Students report that this is the most interesting group work in which they have participated because of the level of preparation of their classmates.

This technology offers an efficient use of instructor time by using the online forums to leverage feedback opportunities. Without it, an instructor’s choices include either little practice and feedback for students or an intense amount of grading for the instructor. This technology facilitates the repetition sometimes needed for the learning process, with a reasonable amount of work by the instructor.

Adaptability

Use of this model – in whole or in part – would be appropriate for any exercise in which an instructor who wishes to use repeated practice of a concept, or who requires multiple drafts so students can improve their writing. It would be easy to adopt some or all of these ideas to fit many assignments in an online, hybrid, or face-to-face course.