Enabling Group Work:Developing an Automated Evaluation System that Collects, Manages, and Analyzes Student Performance Data

摘要

Group activities have the potential to enhance student learning by stimulating individuals to explore complex issues and develop creative solutions through teamwork and interpersonal relationships. Evaluating performance, however, is very challenging and often involves collecting, organizing, storing, and retrieving significant amounts of data to measure the final product and the processes used to achieve it. In Spring Semester 2009, the author incorporated group exercises into the Management Information Systems course at the University of Wisconsin-Superior. Class time alternated between traditional lecture and group activities. Group exercises were designed around various themes that emphasized a broad range of student skills and to create a diverse learning experience. This paper presents a brief background of the effort, approach used to evaluate group work, and an automated evaluation system designed to enable group work in the classroom. The discussion includes the system's basic design and implementation and concludes with lessons learned.