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- Newsgroups: comp.edu
- Path: sparky!uunet!utcsri!geac!censor!comspec!feline!king
- From: king@feline.uucp (KingLeon)
- Subject: Re: collaborative work
- Message-ID: <1992Sep9.041415.4192@feline.uucp>
- Organization: Humber College Technology Dept.
- References: <20161@plains.NoDak.edu>
- Date: Wed, 9 Sep 1992 04:14:15 GMT
- Lines: 32
-
- In article <20161@plains.NoDak.edu> kmagel@plains.NoDak.edu (ken magel) writes:
- >
- > What is your opinion with regards to the value or harm in having student
- > work together on programming projects?
-
- Definitely beneficial if properly structured. As a student some of my best
- and worst experiences involved working with others. As instructor I guess
- I impose the following "rules":
- 1. All work should be attributed to the person involved. This also includes
- project co-ordination work.
- 2. Students should submit at least part of the work as individuals. In
- project courses I've had the group do a presentation with each member of
- the group presenting the section that he/she worked on.
- 3. One approach that I find particularly interesting is to have a two
- part assignment where the 1st part involves writing a support library
- and the 2nd part involves applying it. In the 2nd part I force the
- students to use anybody's 1st part other than their own. I've also
- had students do performance and robustness tests on other student's
- code as part of their assignment. The original author has to support
- their code.
- 4. Dead hand approach - students build on a project done in a previous
- year.
-
- Biggest problems: Students who let their partners down. I usually let each
- partner try and graft their work onto another group - only seems to work when
- students are in pairs and its a small group.
-
- Students who are lazy and try to hide in a group. Final presentations
- work real well here. I've seen groups go out of their way to support people who
- really tried and just clam up for people who didn't contribute.
-
- Best real world experience outside of co-op.
-