Workshop-Presentation (extract from full assessment brief)

Overview
• A 40-minute joint workshop-presentation (as a pair), on group-work
• 1 hour of tutorial support from your pedagogy mentor, including formative feedback on
draft material. i.e. 2 hours support for you as a pair. (Your draft material to be sent no later
than 1 week before the assessment).

Rationale
On one level this task is about teaching groups, and about co-teaching. On another level this is
part of the wider learning about ‘working well with others’. So the learning that occurs through
this task should be applicable in a wide range of settings beyond group teaching.

Form
• You will be allocated to work with one of your peers to develop a joint workshop-
presentation on group-work.
• This will consist of both a jointly facilitated workshop element, and a more theoretical
commentary that reflects on, and explains, the workshop element.
• You will be presenting to a small group of your peers, and also using them as participants in
the workshop.
• We suggest a roughly equal division of 20 minutes for the workshop, and 20 minutes for the
commentary. In any case, time management is crucial:
o Workshop-presentations of less than 35mins in total will be penalised by 1 mark per
minute, starting at 6 marks for 6 minutes short.
o Workshop-presentations longer than 45 minutes will be stopped and penalised by 5
marks.

Content
• The workshop-presentation must specifically address aspects of group work.
• It needs to demonstrate your understanding of the theory of learning in groups, and an
ability to link this to your own practice, as demonstrated in the workshop.
• You should have a discussion, as a pair, with your mentor to agree the topic, scope and
structure of the presentation.
• Some of the possible issues you might focus on include ability, specialism, group dynamics,
different models of facilitation, peer learning, co-teaching versus teaching on your own, the
differences between teaching groups versus individuals, etc.
• Given that you'll be working with your peers as participants we would recommend:
o Working with them 'as they are' - i.e. not asking them to role play
o Remembering that it's a mixed discipline cohort - i.e. don't assume any specific
technical knowledge
o Planning modifications to the activities which you can deploy as needed - e.g.
spiralling and/or scaffolding as appropriate, depending on how the group respond
• The commentary should include setting out the topic of the workshop, explaining relevant
theory/research, and also some spontaneous evaluation of what occurred in the room
during the workshop.