Student Engagement in their project

The project assigned to students studying Quality Management was to conduct a study of quality culture of an organization and the application of quality tools in solving problems.  This project required students to work in groups to develop the poster and do an individual presentation on the topic assigned.  They were required to define and analyse a quality problem for a specific organization and recommend an solution plan.   Students were given one month to complete this assignment.

This project was kicked off with a discussion of requirements followed by a short workshop on the use of Glogster.  Students had just completed a poster for a different course which I reviewed and that gave me an insight into their abilities.  There are some great advantages to reviewing what your students do for their other courses - gives a teacher a good insight into competencies of students in various areas and understand if students transfer their skills easily.

Most of the students were engaged from the word go.  They were looking at doing their best on this assignment to improve their grades!  Their initial reaction to preparing a poster was "This is easy".  However as they worked their way through the project they appreciated the need to create a mock of the content as a text document and have it reviewed by me.  This was done two weeks in the assignment.  Again most groups were good about having their work reviewed and incorporated changes into their project based on the feedback, which worked to their advantage.

One of the features of an online poster is the ability to incorporate hyperlinks and videos.  Having to incorporate these had students doing some good internet based research. 

There was a session held to discuss the rubric of the poster and requirements of the presents.  These regular meetings required students to keep in touch me with and not go away to work on their projects on their own which does not always meet requirements.  It also helped them modularize their tasks and assign responsibilities to members of a group.

The project culminated with students conducting presentations individually on their study.  They also did a short survey on the use of Glogster, giving me some feedback on the use of Glogster.

This was one project where all the pieces fell in place without too much trouble!