Aligning assessment, rewards, behaviours and outcomes in group learning tasks

Richard Ladyshewsky
Curtin University of Technology

Keywords: alignment, learning outcomes, group learning

Academics often use group learning tasks to enhance educational outcomes in the classroom and laboratory setting. Quite often, however, the group learning task goes awry and the intended benefits of the experience do not occur. Failure to understand how assessment, reward and group behaviour constructively align to the learning outcomes is often the cause of the groups' dysfunction. This purpose of this paper is to illustrate the principle of constructive alignment. Examples from two programs are provided where constructive alignment principles were applied. In the first example, undergraduate physiotherapy students practiced their clinical assessment and reasoning skills in a paired group task. In the second example, post-graduate business students worked on their leadership skills in a paired group task. The physiotherapy students gained statistically significant better outcomes from the group experience in comparison to their peers who worked individually. This stemmed, in part, from the constructive alignment principles embedded into the learning plan. The postgraduate business students also reported noteworthy educational achievements from their group experience, again, illustrating the importance of ensuring constructive alignment principles are embedded into the unit's design. The results of this evaluation suggest that academics can be more strategic about ensuring high quality learning outcomes from the group experience by paying careful attention to assessment, rewards and desired group behaviour in line with the stated learning outcomes.