Frequently Asked Questions

Academic honesty
Time investment required
Transporting equipment
Buying forms

 

Academic honesty

Academic honesty is always a concern with assessment and collaborative learning is no different. Creating a strong sense of a learning community will make students less tempted to copy from others, but this can be challenging in large classes. The particular academic honesty challenges with collaborative learning relate to using Readiness Tests in streamed lectures/tutorials and teaching in tiered and/or crowded spaces.

In streamed UoS or when using assessable parts of collaborative learning in tutorials the challenges comes in the form of students sharing questions and answers between sessions. One way to reduce the opportunities for this type of dishonesty is to make sure students return all question sheets and that the question/multiple choice order is changed between different cohorts. In Readiness Tests using different scratchies between cohorts can be very helpful.

In a crowded and tiered lecture theatre it is almost impossible to seat students in a way that they cannot see each others’ either individual or team answers in Readiness Tests. It is also very hard to monitor use of mobile phones which can be easily used to share answers, particularly when using scratchies in team tests. If there are no alternative teaching spaces available, it might be worthwhile to consider adopting online individual readiness tests and/or moving the tests into tutorials. Though Readiness Tests in tutorials increase the opportunities for the other type of academic dishonesty described above.

When teaching in a suitable teaching room where individual students and teams can be provided with adequate personal space and the teaching staff is able to move around students, academic dishonesty seems to be very rare.

 

Time investment required

Developing collaborative learning requires intensive effort and particularly in its first iteration, can be quite time-consuming as the lecturer and students share the experience of working together in a new way. In the future re-iterations, the staff are likely to find that their workload has either reduced or shifted as less and less students contact them with questions as they are dealt within their student teams and the time can be focused on developing materials that benefit the whole class.

 

Transporting equipment

Using TBL with in-class scanning and with a large class generates a reasonable demand for material and equipment to be transported from the office to the class at least once a fortnight. The Office of Learning and Teaching has wheely bags for taking folders, the portable scanner, and laptop ergonomically from A to B. These are available for all to borrow for the semester.  Also, involving the teaching team in the logistics will share the burden and involve everyone in the process.

 

Buying forms

In TBL special forms can be used to make most of Readiness Tests. These are ordered collectively through the Office of Learning and Teaching. Two months before semester it is important to contact OLT with expected student numbers and planned Readiness Tests to make sure all forms are available at the start of the semester. Currently the forms are supplied free of charge to those teaching at the Faculty.