Group Work & Assessment in Engineering
Dr Henny Mills, Senior Lecturer in the School of Engineering discusses creating inclusive groups and supporting collaboration in Civil Engineering.
Category: Groupwork & collaborative learning
CHEMmunicate: an ice breaking game to boost communication and community
Dr Cristina Navarro Reguero and Dr Matthew Hopkinson designed CHEMmunicate, a fun team game where students draw chemical structures by asking yes/no questions—boosting communication skills and reinforcing organic chemistry knowledge.
“Who wants to be millionaire” as a game to enhance students’ engagement and teamwork skills in life sciences curricula
Does the competitive nature of a game help to improve student knowledge retention, while making a seminar session more fun and engaging? Dr Alessio Iannetti investigated this and shares the results in this case study.
Critical intercultural incidents
Alina Schartner, Lecturer in Applied Linguistics collaborated with Nathan Rousseau, from Indiana University-Purdue University, Columbus (IUPUC) on a 4-week curriculum-embedded virtual exchange activity entitled ‘critical intercultural incidents’, involving MA Cross-Cultural Communication students at Newcastle University and undergraduate sociology students at (IUPUC).
From Medications to Music Therapy (and back again): an undergraduate virtual exchange using intergroup dialogue to support cultural competence
Dr Adam Rathbone, Lecturer in Social and Clinical Pharmacy at the School of Pharmacy collaborated with Dr Meganne Masko, Associate Professor of Music Therapy, to adapt the intergroup dialogue method of developing cultural competence to a virtual exchange between Pharmacy students in Newcastle and Music Therapy students from Indiana University – Purdue University, Indiana (IUPUI).
Concept Mapping: a novel way of evaluating student understanding
As part of a doctoral research study, Dr Lucy Hatt, a Senior Lecturer in NUBS, conducted concept mapping workshops across all years of an undergraduate entrepreneurship programme. This case study explains how the workshops enabled the evaluation of students’ understanding of entrepreneurship and discusses the benefits of concept mapping as a tool to help students and educators visualise the development of conceptual understanding.
Using in-class debate to deepen students’ understanding of a teaching topic
Dr Xin Li, Senior Lecturer in International Management and Degree Program Director for MSc International Business Management describes how he used in-class debate with the 2022/23 cohort of full time MBA students, using group work to develop presentations and debate to encourage communication, self-reflection and learning by giving students the opportunity to listen to and engage with different opinions.
Team Work Training – Alien Alliance Groupwork Board Game
Dr Catherine Douglas (staff: she/her) and Manjot Brar (student intern: she/her) from the School of Natural and Environmental Sciences, discuss the development of an innovative ice-breaking board game to enable students to discuss effective strategies for addressing common group working issues, and learn about the value of feedback. Students were integral to the design of the game which was funded to address requests for support in preparing for groupwork. This extremely successful pilot initiative will continue to be used and can be loaned out to anyone interested in reviewing the game and trialing with their students.
Learning Through International Encounter: US/UK Virtual Anthropology Exchange
This virtual exchange proved to be a fantastic opportunity for students to meet with other students living in completely different places and learn more about their experiences and their lives.
Using Design Sprints to Stimulate Students Collaboration
A Design Sprint is a process condensed in time, objective and outcomes used to transform an idea into a prototype. This case study explores how this approach was used to gather students’ feedback on using data analytics to support their learning experience