Assessing levels of online group project engagement

Hoyet Hemphill, Diane Hamilton-Hancock, Leaunda Hemphill (Western Illinois University)

How do we move into an environment where most of the messages we are used to receiving is missing?

Online communication - only 7% come from the spoken word.

What do you think when, a face to face setting,  ...

• we (instructors) move side to side...
• we fidget...
• we wave our arms...
• we touch or avoid touching...

Now we deal with people reading into e-mail messages things that are not really there.  Non-verbal meaning?



Instruction face to face (which we tried in this face to face setting).

• natural
• gestures
• body movement
• easy - when to talk- when to listen
• acknowledgment cues
• feedback nods
• smooth flow

Instruction back to back

• more active listening - hyper-attention
• not smooth - interruptions
• when talking you do little with your hands and other gesture (introverted)
• tried to listen to other conservations
• more pensive, less smiling
• (and this is with voice - which is still easier than text on a screen)

The ideal student

• self-motivated
• self-disciplined
• communicates well through writing
• thinks critically
• works well both independently and with others

The instructor's responsibility

1. keep them on task
2. milestones, goals and roles
3. set expectations about working well with others

Discussions and group projects
-be very specific with instructions (include milestones and goals and tasks)
-and chunk them (in paragraphs, by numbering)
-description of (un)acceptable
-draw on previous knowledge

Do a smaller discussion activities so students get to know each other.  And then when the big group project is started you can divide the "high-volume/quality" posters/achievers into different groups, and the match them with "lower" students.  This is one way to go.
Sometimes it is better to stay with the same groups for the whole course. 


Use a group evaluation form:
(will try to post soon)

Can use google-survey or survey-monkey to tally up the result.

Critical friends peer evaluations are also very helpful for across-group evaluations.

Hemphill and Hemphill (2007)
Guest speaker that post at high level then student postings start high too (expectation postings have an effect)

Wiki site assignment:
How did students collaborate and critique their projects?
Critical thinking categories (revised from Garrison et al. 2001)

• social/other - agreement, acknowledgment, closing, etc.
• triggering - recognizing problems, sense of puzzlement
• exploration
• integration
• solution

Revised Bloom scale (Anderson and Krathwohl, 2001)

• Remember
• Understand
• Apply
• Analyze
• Evaluate
• Create

Another process = Project Life Cycle

• Initiation - goals and scope
• Planning and Design
• Executing
• Monitoring and controlling
• Closing

Revised Project-Based Rating (APECS)

1. Affective acknowledgment - agreement, acknowledgments, closing, non project related, personal info.
2. Purposive processing - task assignment, basic process decisions
3. Effective execution - project development decisions, implementation
4. Creative construction - design, artifact construction
5. Synthesized solution - integration of ideas, creative collaboration, creation of higher level solutions

Overall level of postings tend to increase at project initiation and drop some by close of project.
APECS and extended Garrison ratings are similar throughout the project.
Level of instructor's postings influence the level of student postings, as suggested by other studies.
Instructors need to be sensitive to project activities to gauge their level of postings.

Can this be used as a formative tool?  For now just used for after-the course research purposes.

Project based activities lead to deeper/higher level learning than if it is an individual posting.