Opportunities to Make Group Work Authentic

by Matt Wittstein

January 16, 2023

Limed: Teaching with a Twist – Episode 5

Derek O’Leary from Virginia Commonwealth University teaches advertising, a field known to require collaboration and cooperation with diverse teams, often remotely. David Buck, Gianna Smurro, and our producer Dhvani Toprani consider how to create an authentic group work experience in a remote setting. The panel provides advice on creating groups, providing support, and assessing group work.

This episode of Limed: Teaching with a Twist is hosted by Matt Wittstein and produced by Dhvani Toprani and Matt Wittstein in collaboration with the Center for Engaged Learning.

View a transcript of this episode.

About the Guest

A light-skinned man with a beard and glasses stands in front of greenery.

Derek O’Leary is a full-time advertising instructor at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia. He is in his third year of teaching creative and strategy advertising classes, having previously worked in the advertising industry for ten years as an experiential director. Most of his classes are working with seniors to create work and build portfolios to build skills and impress their future employers. In addition to teaching, Derek helps run the school’s Virtual Mentorship Day, In-person Portfolio Show and co-chairs the Assessment and Accreditation committee. He loves the challenge of finding ways to use new tools in his classroom like Figma, Notion, Blender, AI, and Augmented Reality tools. He runs a small design business with his wife that sells at local Richmond stores and on Etsy: O’Fung Studios

About the Panel

Headshot of a light-skinned man wearing a plaid shirt

David Buck is an Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Psychology at Elon University. He teaches courses on research methods and social psychology, and he has long been interested in using empirical research as a tool for informing pedagogical decisions. Trained as a social psychologist, his research is broadly focused on intergroup bias and social cognition. As a former CEL Scholar, he conducted research on the use of collaborative projects and assignments as high-impact practices.

A light-skinned woman with medium length dark hair sits at the base of an outdoor, stone stairway.

Gianna Smurro is a second-year student at Elon University studying Journalism and Cinema & TV Arts with a minor in Political Science. As a CEL Student Scholar, she is providing a student perspective on a three-year research seminar on Work-Integrated Learning. She is also a Communications Fellow at Elon and a communications and editorial intern for Bringing Theory to Practice. 

A headshot of a woman with medium-light skin tone and medium length dark hair

Dhvani Toprani is an Instructional Technologist at Elon University with a PhD in Learning, Design, and Technology. She believes in technology’s ability to transform teaching and learning if we learn to effectively collaborate with and around it. Her research focuses on integrating technology in learning environments to promote collaboration, design thinking, and other higher-order thinking skills. Her work at Elon University focuses on building digital fluency among university’s faculty and staff to support the design of technology enabled learning environments.

CEL Blog Posts Related to This Episode

A group of three students sit around a table, working on laptops. A quote is overlaid: "Is there a way to conduct peer assessment that is valid and perceived as fair?"

I’ve got it! What if they grade each other?

In previous posts, I’ve discussed how collaborative assignments pose a challenge for valid assessment because the resulting product typically reflects pooled ability and effort (for a good review, see Webb et al. 1998). One way instructors have attempted to overcome…

Students gather around a table to collaborate

Is There Value in Summative Peer Assessment?

A challenge of psychological research is that we are often trying to measure things that don’t have physical form, such as intelligence or anxiety. These abstract constructs are meaningful and useful variables, but you can’t measure out 10 grams of…

Photo of hand holding a camera lens in front of a view of mountains and lake. With text overlaid: "Of all the variables on the list, I would argue that the most important one for instructors and researchers is the objective."

A Typology of Peer Assessment

One of the hallmarks of many group projects is the incorporation of peer assessment into the project grade. This strategy is often used to try to reduce the potential for inequity when individual members of groups share a common grade….

Group of three students work together around a computer. A quote is overlaid: "If the rationale behind assigning a collaborative project is that you want to take advantage of the potential learning benefits associated with cooperative learning, then the assignment is to some extent a means, not an end."

The Problem with Assessing Groups

One of the challenges an instructor faces when developing any collaborative project is how to assess learning. When multiple students work together to create some product, it’s not necessarily the case that the final product reflects the learning of all…

Collaboration and Memory

When Does Collaboration Hurt Memory?

Take six people and give them all a list of words to commit to memory individually. Next, have three of those people work as a group to recall as many words as they can. Have the other three people try…

Collaborative Testing - Incorporating team-based testing in your course

Why Letting Your Students Collaborate on Exams isn’t a Bad Idea

Collaborative testing (aka team-based testing) is a collaborative learning technique that has received a fair amount of attention from researchers (LoGiudice, Pachai, and Kim 2015). It is a practice that typically involves students taking a test individually and then taking…

Other Resources Related to This Episode

Posted in:

Tagged: