Working in small groups in undergraduate classes can increase opportunities for discourse around problem-solving, design tasks, and authentic issues. By interacting with different people students can learn diverse ideas from classmates who have had different experiences, worldviews, or knowledge.
Instructors need to support group work. My research in this area has explored several types of support.
My colleagues, Drs. Becki Atadero (Civil & Environmental Engineering) and Karen Rambo-Hernandez (West Virginia University), and I have found that:
1. The types of prompts that instructors assign affects the nature of discourse in small groups
2. The gender grouping affects the discourse dynamics in small groups
3. Completing problem-project based assignments during an engineering class affects students' ideas about persisting in the major.
4. Asking students to write about the attributes of groups can affect students' attitudes about diverse ideas represented in groups.
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Sometimes in-class group work uncovers implicit biases. My colleagues, Drs. Emily Fischer, assist prof. and Brittany Bloodhart, postdoc (Atmospheric Science), Anne Marie A. Casper (postdoc, Engineering), and Laura Sample McMeeking (STEM Center), and I found that although there are more women enrolled in undergraduate life science courses, like in physical science courses, men and women (though, to a lesser degree) assume that male students outperform women students, when, in fact, the opposite is the case. This study was supported by the PreCIP program through the CSU Office of the Vice Provost for Research and the paper was published in PLOS One.
Instructors need to support group work. My research in this area has explored several types of support.
My colleagues, Drs. Becki Atadero (Civil & Environmental Engineering) and Karen Rambo-Hernandez (West Virginia University), and I have found that:
1. The types of prompts that instructors assign affects the nature of discourse in small groups
2. The gender grouping affects the discourse dynamics in small groups
3. Completing problem-project based assignments during an engineering class affects students' ideas about persisting in the major.
4. Asking students to write about the attributes of groups can affect students' attitudes about diverse ideas represented in groups.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Sometimes in-class group work uncovers implicit biases. My colleagues, Drs. Emily Fischer, assist prof. and Brittany Bloodhart, postdoc (Atmospheric Science), Anne Marie A. Casper (postdoc, Engineering), and Laura Sample McMeeking (STEM Center), and I found that although there are more women enrolled in undergraduate life science courses, like in physical science courses, men and women (though, to a lesser degree) assume that male students outperform women students, when, in fact, the opposite is the case. This study was supported by the PreCIP program through the CSU Office of the Vice Provost for Research and the paper was published in PLOS One.