This document discusses group work assessment and challenges in three sections. It begins by outlining reasons for doing group work, such as developing job-relevant skills, and common problems that arise like freeloading members and assigning fair grades. Several solutions are proposed, including clear expectations, tracking individual contributions, and incorporating peer reviews. Benefits of group work are then highlighted, like improved engagement and soft skills. The document concludes that while group work causes issues, it is worthwhile for building student resilience and employability.

1. Herding Cats out of
Pandora’s Box
A reflection on group work and assessment
You may find this useful later…
http://pollev.com/ralphferneyh881

2. Rule One
When doing group work, you need
more than one person…

3. Who we are
Ralph Ferneyhough
Senior Lecturer
Games Development
Adam Hughes
Informatics Centre Manager
Department of Computer Science

4. Background
Ralph Ferneyhough
 Game developer for 20 years – 17 LEGO games
 Now programme leader for Games Development BSc
 Two group-work modules – CO4036 and CO5016
Adam Hughes
 Experienced team manager & PRINCE2 practitioner
 Manager of the Informatics Centre
 Module lead for CO5019 – and future Software Engineering

6. Introduction
 Why do group work?
 What problems does it cause?
 Can we solve those problems?
 Exploration and reflection with insights
 Please join in!
 Not every question has an answer! (Sorry…)
 This isn’t theory – this has all happened
 Conclusion - Is it all worth it?

7. Why do we do it
Students want to have relevant work to place in their
portfolios
 “There is nothing that shows a graduate can hit the ground running more
than having completed and made available games project[s].” (TIGA,
2014)
Inability to find real industry placements
 “…just 21 per cent of people in the UK games industry have undertaken
work experience prior to entering the sector.” (Develop Online, 2015)
Tangible results
Transferable skills
Consolidation – students can apply all skills

8. Problems
Word Cloud Poll #1

9. Problems
 Team selection
 Freeloaders / Attendance
 Recognising individual contributions
 Clear assignment briefs
 Setting fair marking criteria
 Student organisation / teamwork
 Communication
 Team conflicts

10. Team Selection
Many options, including:
 Random
 Pre-selected
 Self selection
 Seeding
 Pair and Pair
There will always be non-conformist student(s)
 Accept this reflects real-life
} These two work well for us

11. Freeloaders
 People who rely on their team to “get them through”
 Get teams to make team rules, possibly a team leader
 Encourage teams to sort it… but be prepared to step in
 Keep it in mind when setting marking criteria
 Attendance rules (derogation needed)

12. Recognising contribution
 Use mentoring / team primary contact for large groups
 Peer reviews (they make great reading!)
 Team updates on a weekly basis
 Get teams to sign off the entire report
 Task tracking (e.g. JIRA) / Hours recording
 Make use of individual assessment components

13. Assignment Briefs
 Decide if you are marking the end result?
 Or the process of teamwork?
 A combination of both is probably realistic
 Portfolio of evidence as primary submission
 Don’t have too much to mark (my mistake!)
 Secondary component which is individual in nature

14. Marking Criteria
 Clear indication of where the marks are going
 Clear distinction between individual and group marks
 Consider how to recognise individual effort…
 …and to penalise poor engagement
 Group marking using peers / mentors / clients
 Establish how late work penalties will be applied

15. Student Teamwork
 Clearly set expectations (and rules!)
 Anchor this to real-life expectations
 Guest lectures – students often won’t listen to lecturers!
 “Disciplinary” system

16. Communication
 Impress the important of communication
 No team can function if they don’t talk to each other
 Teams need to agree their own strategy
 Facebook, WhatsApp, Yammer can all work
 Hands-off monitoring can work…
 … but students will tend to avoid formal systems

17. Team Conflicts
 To be expected!
 Caused by lack of experience
 Can actually provide a better learning experience
 Try formative groups first so they can find their feet
 Remember – let teams try to sort it first (the rules)
 Step in when necessary – don’t let it kill a team

18. Failure
 Also to be expected! (Hopefully not too often)
 Usually more of an issue with end-result marking
 Reflective portfolios can turn a failure into a success
 Use problems as action learning drivers

19. Benefits
Word Cloud Poll #2

20. Benefits
 Satisfaction / Sense of achievement
 High student engagement
 Even problems give good experience
 Practical portfolio contributions
 Transferable / “Soft” skills
 Takes students out of their comfort zones
 Real world relevance

21. Is it worth it?
Yes!
Do not be afraid of group work
It is worth the “pain” to develop resilience and
employability in your students

22. Feedback (CO5019)
“I don't usually give feedback in relation to modules and
teaching but I feel in this instance I should. The main positive
feedback I can give is how organized the module was as well
as how hands on the staff members were. You felt very
welcomed and part of a community unlike the other modules
were you were just there to learn and do the work provided.”
“I can honestly say I am much more optimistic about working
a full time job now.”
“…really enjoyed the module, thanks for the all the help the IC
have given us. It's much appreciated and hopefully we'll see
you next year.”

23. Feedback (continued)
“Just wanted to say thank you very much to you and the team
in the informatics centre. I have thoroughly enjoyed the last
six weeks and I feel I have progressed my professional and
technical skills. I would happily promote Experiential
Learning to the students that have the option of doing it next
year. Again thank you very much and have a good summer, ill
hopefully see you next year!”
“I just wanted to say thanks for organising this module, it's
been really enjoyable and made it feel like it was actually
worthwhile to come into university every day. This has
without doubt been the most worthwhile module so far.”

24. Slide Share
https://www.slideshare.net/
RalphFerneyhough/
herding-cats-65831116

25. Appendix
Summary presentation
2015 delivery of CO5019

26. The plan
Our primary target was to simulate a games
development company:
Create teams mirroring a real studio
 Seeded each team with a first member, who picked a colleague
 Rest of team selected at random
Project briefs to create games which could go to market
as promotional apps
 Shell – to promote a new fuel type
 Jack Daniel’s – to promote new flavours
 easyJet – to promote new frequent flyer programme
….

27. The plan (continued)
A proper relationship between clients and the team
 Formal presentations
 Communications restricted
Working hours and responsibilities to match those found in
a real business
Taught methodologies such as Scrum & Kanban
Industry support
 Talks and presentations from industry
 Industry mentoring and feedback
Most importantly, students were entirely responsible for
their team’s final product

28. Keeping it real
We further attempted to keep them on their toes by:
 Changing the project specification part way through
 Introducing some project creep
 Resilience checks – backups, source control etc.
 Disciplinary actions
 Hours control and timesheets
 Client requests arriving outside of working hours
 Extra work – e.g. marketing and promotional materials
 Making some work redundant
 Added a testing environment (which happened to be Open Day!)
 Wrap party – complete with pizza!

29. Industry mentors
…and some more mentors (just didn’t take photos!)

30. Scrum & Kanban

31. Game proposal meeting

32. Peer group presentation

33. Wrap party

34. Student engagement
• Asking for feedback verbally throughout module about
 Work practices
 Presentations and how they went
 Response to negative events – e.g. extra and redundant work
• Final presentation to clients
• Exit interviews with tutors
• Peer reviews
 Highly critical of each over (especially working hours)
 Showed that working in teams can be hard
• Module evaluation forms
• Student engagement panel - ongoing

35. Student opinions
 “I like how the module taught us to be more self reliant as this is
a much needed skill for indie development”
 “What I enjoyed most about this module is the freedom we had to
organise everything independently as a team and making sure
that we completed the tasks on time”
 “A couple of the team members were quite annoying so it was
unfortunate that we didn't get to choose the group, but then that’s
the same in a real life situation”
 “I think the team leader should have the ability to be able to sack
disruptive people from their team”
 “A small number of students were coming and going as they
pleased, with little respect being shown to those actually working
during the set hours”