Education Commons^™

Quizmastery: Students As Bloggers And Testers In Pursuit Of Grammatical Competence, Sue Norton, Odette Gabaudan

Articles

This article considers the challenges confronted by instructors of composition and writing skills in higher education. Identifying key aspects of grammar, syntax, and punctuation, it argues that a grammatically informed terminology is helpful to learner-writers endeavouring to improve the clarity of their written assignments. To aid assimilation of this terminology, and the concepts it signifies, e-learning tools can be integrated into the curriculum so that students can consolidate knowledge through their own construction of it. As they create blogs and peer to peer quizzes, they become more theoretically and practically informed about the basis of effective writing practices.

An Exploration Of Fairness In The Assessment And Process Of Student Group Work, Rita Gibson, Emma Geoghegan, Oscar Macananey, Andrew Hines, Lorraine D'Arcy

Practitioner Research Projects

This project was driven by a motivation to be as fair as possible in the assessment of students' group work. Achieving fairness in assessment is a recurrent them in group project assessment literature (Nordberg, 2009). All authors of this report teach modules with group projects, and acknowledged that discrepancies often exist between a mark assigned to a group and an individual's contribution. Our aims were to (a) collectively enhance our understanding of the issues that need to be considered when assessing a group work project and (b) collectively build our confidence in approaches chosen to overcome these challenges. The findings …

Methods For Deriving Individual Marks From Group Work, Miriam Delaney, Lucy Bowe, Breiffni Fitzgerald, Peter Maccann, Christina Ryan

Practitioner Research Projects

Group assessment is a valuable teaching and learning method (Springer et al., 1999). This has been comprehensively demonstrated in the teaching and learning literature both in general (Johnson et al., 1991) and in specific contexts. This assessment practice promotes questioning, discussion and debate and encourages students to become active team players (DIT, 2013). However, when using this form of assessment, it is important to recognise that it is "individuals who graduate and gain qualifications" (Gibbs, 2009, p.4). The problem of freeloading has been identified and one of the suggested methods of reducing this is to incorporate individual assessment into the …

Facilitating Group Work: A Guide To Good Practice, Ronan Mccrea, Irene Neville, David Rickard, Ciara Walsh, David Williams

Practitioner Research Projects

Oakley et al. (2004) and Gibbs (2009) observe that owing to the extensive literature on group work, lecturers searching for a succinct guide on how to facilitate this activity effectively would find it challenging to digest such a large corpus. We extensively reviewed the literature in order to produce a quick and accessible guide for lecturers to use. It is our aspiration that this could be referred to when planning and facilitating group work projects with insights and recommendations informed by our research. Moreover, as this work draws on publications from educators in a wide range of disciplines, we expect …

Gamification To Improve First Year Engagement, John Colleran, Aoife Lloyd Mckernan, Julie Ann Naughton, Brian Vaughan

Practitioner Research Projects

The purpose of this project was to examine the role of Gamification in increasing first year student engagement within the third level educational setting. A literature review was carried out in order to explore the teaching philosophy behind gamification in education and review the quantitative and qualitative evidence regarding its use. Gamification can be broadly described as the application of gaming methods and elements in non-gaming contexts in order to improve user engagement and user experience (Deterding et al., 2011). Qualitative analysis suggests these factors result in beneficial emotional and social impacts on students, particularly in the area of increasing …

Supporting Sustainability Through Developing A Learning Network Among Traditional Food Producers: Applications Of Action Learning, Paul Coughlan, David Coghlan, Denise O'Leary, Clare Rigg, Doireann Barrett

Articles

Purpose: The chapter describes and reflects upon an EU-funded research initiative, TRADEIT, which has attempted to develop a learning network among European traditional food producers as one way of contributing to the economic sustainability of the ventures, the social sustainability of the food’s regional character, and the environmental sustainability of food production through the use of traditional methods.

Design/methodology/approach: The chapter describes TRADEIT before moving on to an exploration of learning in organizations and networks. It outlines the action learning research methodology developed and implemented to explore the development of a learning network in TRADEIT. A single case history …

Turning To Case Studies As A Mechanism For Learning In Action Learning, Denise O'Leary, Paul Coughlan, Clare Rigg, David Coghlan

Articles

Case studies are a useful means of capturing and sharing experiential knowledge by allowing researchers to explore the social, organisational and political contexts of a specific case. Although accounts of action learning are often reported using a case study approach, it is not common to see individual case studies being used as a learning practice within action learning sets. Drawing on a network action learning (NAL) project, this paper explores how the process of coaching, articulating, authoring, sharing and editing case studies provided a vehicle for learning and research within a NAL set. The intended contribution of this paper to …