Increasing student engagement and accountability through team structure, peer-to-peer feedback, and discussion boards
Students were held accountable for their participation in the course and their contributions to the team in several ways. iRATs and within-lecture questions ensured that students were individually responsible for their own understanding of the course material. Each team had a team leader whose role was to organize online meeting schedules and was also the person in charge of submitting the assignments. The team leader role rotated weekly among the students, and by the end of the term each student took on the leadership role three or four times.
In addition, students within a team provided each other with anonymous peer-to-peer feedback by completing peer evaluations in Week 5. We asked students to provide this anonymous feedback to their team members using the TEAMMATES website (https://teammatesv4.appspot.com/ ). Our peer evaluations consisted of 10 multiple choice questions (answer choices: always, often, sometimes, never) such as:
They also wrote one or two sentences for each team member about:
Instructors reviewed the answers before sending them to the students. These evaluations were essential in positively modifying student behavior as peer feedback has a strong impact on students. We often saw students that were not engaged prior to peer evaluations become more responsible and involved after evaluations.
To facilitate teamwork and discussions, we created a Slack workspace with a general channel for the class. Each team also had their own channel to organize logistics, discuss lectures, and team assignments. Slack has the advantage that it can be used in multiple platforms (i.e. phones, computers, tablets, etc.) and it has been developed to facilitate team communication and productivity. Students gained participation points for actively engaging with other students on Slack. All students were invited to participate in the Slack workspace during the first week of classes. Once the students accepted the invitation, they were automatically added to the class general channel where the instructor answered commonly asked questions, provided logistical information to the class, and included current events and news related to course content. Students were encouraged to ask questions about lectures and problem sets in this general channel. Each student was also added to a private channel with their team members. The instructor introduced all team members and provided an icebreaker activity to motivate discussion in the team channel. Students were encouraged to use the team channel to get in contact with each other, schedule meetings, ask questions about lectures and sections, and to discuss questions posted by the instructor on relevant topics. Every week, we had students sending direct messages to contact the instructors and active participation within team channels. The general channel was often used by students when tests where getting closer to ask about test logistics and clarifying course topics.