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March 22, 2006
Large Section Group Management
Gerard Klonarides at Florida International University uses a number of innovative ideas in his large (175) introductory MIS class. One of them concerns group management.
During the first class period he selects 6 students to be directors for the class. These directors are students with prior IS, project management, or other business experience. Gerry says the position is known as one with useful authority and he has prior students come to the first day of a new class to promote their friends for a director slot.
He then has the remaining students form groups of 4. "Meet the person sitting next to you, if you don't already know them. Now, turn around and meet the two people behind/in front of you. Form a group of 4." He then has each group select a manager. The group can select the manager in any way they want. For a typical class of 175 students, he'll have 42 groups. He says he can do this in 4 minutes or less.
Next, he has each group manager report to a director ... there will be a total of 7 groups per director. (I'm not sure how he does that part.)
Each director has a number from 1 to 6. Each group has a three digit number, the first digit of which is the director's number. Thus, the first group for director 1 is 101, the second group is 102, up to 107. The highest numbered group is 607. In this way he knows immediately who the director is for each group.
Every class period, he does some group exercise. The students in the group prepare written evidence of their group's work and their manager turns it into their director. The directors record the group's work along with the names of the students in the group that day. (Hence, the directors are also taking attendance.) I'm not sure whether the director's grade the work, but they might. I'm also not sure what's in it for the directors ... but given that students compete for the job, there must be some reward.
All of this sounds very intriguing to me. I hope Gerry will fill us in on the specifics that I missed.
I also think it works. Walking across campus with him last week, quite a number of students went out of their way to say hello to him!
Posted by DavidK at March 22, 2006 05:01 PM | Permalink