Some notes on self-organized, collaborative exam review sessions.
Context
I am teaching three sections of Principles of Economics this semester. For the first in-class exam I prepared a comprehensive study guide and announced that all of the questions on the actual exam would be selected directly from the study guide.
The leifmotiv of the first couple of weeks in my Principles class is to frame economic analysis as the study of coordination problems. First, I teach a simple model of production, specialization and exchange to illustrate the argument that, given certain conditions, trade can be mutually beneficial. Second, I introduce the basics of supply, demand, and equilibrium to illustrate how market forces coordinate the use of scare resources.
In addition to the standard mechanics of these models, I emphasize that the invisible hand of the market is just one of a number of institutions that can coordinate individual activity and group outcomes.
Setup and Outcome
At the beginning of the session, I announced that conducting the review was up to the students. To prevent a complete breakdown of social order, I picked a volunteer to facilitate the group work and made it clear that I could be called upon as a ‘joker’ for a limited number of questions.
I ran this experiment in three separate sections with considerably different results. (Obviously, the outcome is highly sensitive to facilitation and group dynamics.) In two sections students briefly discussed how to proceed before they started working on the study guide, in another section this question came up only midway through the session.
All sections struggled with adapting to the new scenario, albeit to different degrees. Generally, it seems the better the relation between the facilitator and a group, the less students would address me for support. In turn, it was more or less difficult for me not to fall back into the role of the teacher.
To-Do List
I think there is something in this format that is worth developing and I plan to work on three aspects in particular.
First, develop clear learning goals along two dimensions: a) practical group work skills (facilitation, organization, participation), b) frame the review session explicitly as a self-organized solution to a coordination problem in response to the ‘deregulation’ of the learning environment.
Second, try different scenarios. Of course, picking a facilitator is merely a transfer, and not a removal, of authority. A more interesting, but also more time consuming and potentially more ineffective, scenario would be to create a complete institutional vacuum.
Third, give feedback to the facilitator and gather student comments to improve the effectiveness of subsequent review sessions. Consider a feedback round in class and/or a writing assignment for students to reflect on self-organization, institutions, and collaboration in the context of preparing for an exam.