That sounds so familiar from my pre-TBL days teaching on the MPharm when I had students create a wiki summary of research on a key question - done in groups, out of class, with the freeloading, intragroup traumas etc you're experiencing!
I'm not sure if there's any way to improve out of class assignments- students will always divide to conquer & all the group work problems you've described so well arise.
Anything you can do to get the students to work in class, with 4S activities will fix it. I guess that might need some thinking time though.
I wonder if you can find easier ways to make the activity move towards 4S principles, for the short term?
Could you set several specific example businesses (for the out of class preparation where students pull together your key concepts)?
Then, treat each business as a small application exercise, and get all teams to state the key principle (from a list based on your teaching) that they believe that business embodies best? Then have them argue out their rationale team to team?
I could imagine a final activity where you make the list of options the businesses discussed in previous exercises, and ask each team to pick which business they believe will be most successful in a particular setting (I'm way outside my knowledge base here!!) - so they have to apply / reason / evaluate which principles are most important in a specific scenario.
As I usually do drug-based teaching, I may be way off base here; hoping the thoughts might help spark your own ideas though!
Josie
Dr Josie A Fraser
> On 9 Oct 2014, at 03:59, Ken Gunnells <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> I have a problem with an assignment in my face-to-face Management Information Systems
> class. At the end of each 2-week module, the current out-of-class assignment has student
> teams creating a summary of the key topics from the chapters and cases in the module.
> They are supposed to relate each of approximately 6-8 key topics to the theme of the
> module, demonstrate an understanding of the topic, and give examples of how businesses
> have used or can use the topics to compete in the market place. The goals are for students
> to be able to separate the important from the less important, and to give them the tools to
> make better decisions in the future. The problem with this assignment is that teams have
> taken a divide and conquer approach, and freeloading has become a problem, even in the
> face of impending peer evaluations. I am also getting brain dumps and summaries of entire
> chapters and cases, instead of the summaries of a few key topics. In order to reach my
> goals for the assignment and to eliminate the freeloading problem, I need your help to
> redesign it while I still have 3 modules yet to cover. If I could somehow find a way to
> revise the assignment then I am confident I could dramatically improve the class.
>
> Ken Gunnells, Ph.D.
> COLLAT School of Business, Management Information Systems & Quantitative Methods
> UAB | The University of Alabama at Birmingham
> 205-222-0871
> [log in to unmask]
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