Defining+the+Project

A group project should be a strategic way of reaching a clearly defined course objective (see previous posting on course objectives), that will be measured and assessed __very differently__ from other course assignments. You will most likely have to account for it on your assessment rubric. Because several people will be contributing to the success of the group project, there must be multiple levels of assessments: Because of these multiple levels of assessments, we have purchased products from Learning Objects, Inc., a series of Building Blocks that integrate directly into Blackboard and that make doing such group work a breeze. Because the technological aspects of doing group work have been accounted for and because I will be doing online training with you on these Building Blocks, I will focus here on the pedagogy and some practical aspects of doing group work. However, keeping in mind that assessment will be done on multiple levels is an important starting point for this discussion. A group project begins with defining a **Project Plan** that answers the question “What Do We Want to Accomplish?” You will find this [|primer on project planning] useful as you think about that question. We then begin to break down that question into manageable parts by using a **project scope document**, such as this [|example]. You can consider assigning each team a separate project, in which case you will need x-number of project plans. Or you can consider assigning one project to which several teams will contribute. This is closer to real world applications of projects and probably more valuable to your students. The tricky part will be in setting the appropriate timeline with reasonable convergence points, so that the “deliverable” from Team A that Team B needs to sustain their momentum is delivered on time. I will be elaborating on easy-to-use techniques to solve this problem in future postings. I love doing this type of project because it builds tremendous accountability skills in the students, and there is a sustained excitement about the project as each team contributes to the final product, whatever that might be. They learn time management skills, risk management, tasking, negotiating multiple dependencies, resource management, and people skills. All of these are marketable skills. In addition, group projects (small group, or team-based large projects) make for excellent portfolio pieces. Each student will have an online portfolio component in Blackboard, and so all of the components of the project, including project plans, project initiation plans, project scope documents, strategic plans, responsibility charts, and action plans become excellent components for a portfolio that will eventually find its way into the hands of an employer. I will provide you with samples of each of these documents for your use in the following sections that follow this introduction. When students can see evidence of their learning in the projects that they have completed, they are motivated to continue their learning. Projects are excellent retention tools.
 * DEFINING THE PROJECT **
 * Self-assessment
 * Peer assessment
 * Instructor assessment