COLLABORATIVE LEARNING
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Frances: Does This Sound Like You?
Frances, a junior at the university, is currently enrolled in an elective course. A few of her friends are in this class; in fact, they took the class because it is at a convenient time and there are projects but no exams. As a mathematics major, most of her assignments are practice problems, so the variety of academic tasks provided by the projects was very appealing. Frances is outgoing and tends to be a leader rather than a follower. She is successful at balancing academic and non-academic responsibilities. While her course load is 16 credits this semester, her work-study obligations require an additional 20 hours each week. Beyond these responsibilities she still finds time to go out with her friends and socialize.
One major course assignment is a group project. This project consists of writing a short paper and doing a presentation in class. Three students choose to work together in each group. Each student is expected to contribute to the project because the same grade is given to each member of the group.
Frances elected to work on the group project with Shaun and Jimmy. All three students live near each other and see one another on a daily basis. Shaun can best be characterized as a socializer. Priorities for her are social obligations first and then academics. The amazing thing about Shaun is that she rarely seems to spend time studying and yet manages to do fine in all her classes. Jimmy, on the other hand, is a plugger. He needs to spend a lot of time and effort in his courses and his grades illustrate that commitment.
When the group got together they found a lot to talk about but none of it related to the project. Then as the hour got late, they got into gear and three something together. Mostly they were planning on "winging" the presentation. Shaun didn't contribute to the project from the very beginning but, then again, everyone expected that. Shaun provided the humor and distractions while Jimmy and Frances alternately tried to keep each other on task. To complicate matters further, Jimmy, Shaun, and Frances were not clear on what they had to do. Each student had a different interpretation of the assignment and no one brought the written directions to the group meeting. Jimmy and Frances know they could have done a much better job while Shaun thinks that everything went OK.