VOC 1: The fourth teaching session on the 29th of October: a chairperson's role

This time I worked as a chair, so I write here about things that I have learnt on the topics other groups presented.

4.1 Group Dynamics

One group taught about group dynamics. According to Tuckman´s model (1965), group development has four stages:

•     Forming
•     Storming
•     Norming
•     Performing

Tuckman states that some groups don't ever get to the stage of performing. I find it interesting to learn that storming is a part of the development of every group. I think many people are not aware of that since often, when some conflicts appear, people just tend to think that they are not able to work together, and sometimes groups can even break up for that reason. Group work dynamics is something I should definitely teach students that they would know in advance that these stages are just a natural process.

Source: Tuckman, B. (1965). Developmental sequence in small groups. Psychological Bulletin 63  (6)

4.2 Good teaching according to students' ratings

Another group taught about students' expectations of teachers. Here is what the book Teaching Engineering (Wankat & Oreovicz) tells about that topic. Studies show that students include the following factors in good teaching (the most important factor is first) (Aubrecht 1979):

•         Skill: Interesting presentation, intellectual stimulation, clarity
•         Rapport: Concern for students, classroom interaction
•         Structure: Organization, course preparation
•         Difficulty: Amount of work demanded

According to Teaching Engineering, students rate courses with more workload higher than courses with minimum workload. I find that surprising, but I think the reason to that is that students value that they learn more when there’s more work to do. Of course the workload shouldn’t be too vast, since then it would become frustrating.

Another list of the seven factors according to student ratings is given by Marsh (1984) (according to Wankat & Oreovicz):

•         Learning and value: Challenge, subject interest, amount of material learned
•         Enthusiasm: Interest, humor
•         Organization: Objectives, clear explanation
•         Group interaction
•         Individual rapport: Provides help and answers questions
•         Breadth of coverage
•         Examinations and grading

Source: Wankat, P. C.  & Oreovicz, F. S. Teaching Engineering. Chapter 16. Purdue University.