Edited by Kate Blackham, Monday, 4 Apr 2022, 13:12
I don't know if this is an aspect of my autism and I'm not thinking through all the potential outcomes properly, but despite assurances from my mentor that I could let the students sort themselves into groups and peer-review buddy systems, it doesn't seem to have worked well. I have peer-review buddies where the work is lopsided - one doing a peer review and their partner not bothering, I have students who don't seem to have managed to get themselves into groups.
I'm posting the exact threads word-for-word in the forums to do it. Backing up with emails explaining what I need them to do. And still people are being "missed" and overlooked in the "please pair up here thread".
I think next year (assuming I pass probation) I will organise them into groups right from the beginning of the year. It will give them time to build relationships, time for me to spot if a person's classmates have all disengaged (using the OU Analyse tool, which I found out about for the first time only very recently), time to realise they should feel guilty if they let down their peers.
The "organise yourselves" approach is supposed to allow for the fact that students work at different paces and someone might want to race ahead but be stuck with students who are working through earlier material.
Organising group work
I don't know if this is an aspect of my autism and I'm not thinking through all the potential outcomes properly, but despite assurances from my mentor that I could let the students sort themselves into groups and peer-review buddy systems, it doesn't seem to have worked well. I have peer-review buddies where the work is lopsided - one doing a peer review and their partner not bothering, I have students who don't seem to have managed to get themselves into groups.
I'm posting the exact threads word-for-word in the forums to do it. Backing up with emails explaining what I need them to do. And still people are being "missed" and overlooked in the "please pair up here thread".
I think next year (assuming I pass probation) I will organise them into groups right from the beginning of the year. It will give them time to build relationships, time for me to spot if a person's classmates have all disengaged (using the OU Analyse tool, which I found out about for the first time only very recently), time to realise they should feel guilty if they let down their peers.
The "organise yourselves" approach is supposed to allow for the fact that students work at different paces and someone might want to race ahead but be stuck with students who are working through earlier material.