Critical reflection on my undergraduate dissertatiton
Chapter 1 – Introduction
Being a student in an undergraduate course can be exciting and challenging at the same time. The number of assessments and projects are fairly calculated, so a student can achieve a variety of industry experience and overcome their limitations. But what pushes a student’s impediments is when they are presented with group assignments. When working on complex projects, teamwork experience is essential for a true industry feel. According to Harmer (2007) the most common assignation of groups is either the teacher forms the groups, or the students are allowed to pick who they are going to work with. Most of the times when a student is presented with a group assignment, they are asked to choose their own group. This is where most scholars will choose their newly acquainted colleagues, whilst the other students who are not as social will pair up with who’s left just so they can be done with it. Students will carry out with their formed group throughout the years confronting every group assignment in the same structure. But is this the best way to assign students in groups? Studies have shown groups have better outcomes when they are selected based on a mixture of homogeneous (their average grades) and an assortment of interests or traits (Brickell et al., 1994). This paper will research, propose, and develop an application for grouping students into teams enhanced productivity.
1.1 Aims and Objectives
1.1.1 Aims
Develop prototype web-based application for grouping students into teams for improved performance.
1.1.2 Objectives
Objective 1: Research and establish the grouping criteria through interviews and secondary research.
Objective 2: Design, develop and test the web-based application.
1.2 Ethical Issues
The interview participants have been informed and their consent has been given. All the data collected through interviews is being stored securely on the university cloud storage. The data will be deleted upon finalising the study year. The subjects will keep their anonymity and confidentiality. No sensitive information about the interviewees will be disclosed.
The application will not consist of any real data or APIs. The testing will be done with fictive data to assess the functionality of the web-based application.
In the case of further research into the application, some ethical issues are to be considered such as but not limited to protecting student data, obtaining students consent for holding sensitive data and assessing their interests for the group formation tool.
