Hello, Gary. RE: "Student walked out" posting. Now that it has happened,let's see what to do: (1) I would definitely contact the student to make sure she is OK and to ask if she has any concerns. That would put your question is a non-defensive tone. I would NOT say "Why did you walk out?" because it can lead to either a confrontation or a closing of communication.
I KNOW what you are saying; her actions (walking out without a word of explanation) were not professional. But the point of going to ECPI is to learn the skills, knowledge and professionalism that she needs for a productive career. So first, we find the student and find out what is troubling her. THEN, we work on professionalism for future situations. (Can you imagine her walking out of a group meeting at her job?)
(2) Although "group work" sounds great, it DOES have a recurring problem: one person does most of the good work, and everyone else does littler or nothing (or they do it poorly). Perhaps she did have a bad experience with this. So, work slowly into "group work". One method is to have them work on an involved assignment that will be graded individually, BUT, encourage them to share what they figure out and to get the whole project done faster. I will show one student how to do something (such as set up a formula in Excel, or change the status of a Windows user to administrator), then instruct the student to show TWO others, who must also show TWO others. Thus the "group work" becomes "collaborative" work.
(3) for future events: Losing a class is so frustrating, and when it happens it can affect the whole term. Having said that, to fix THIS class,avoid group work until you have "buy in". "Buy in" is the feeling of team spirit that you establish in a class, usually in the first week. It is hard to say how I get the buy in going, but I focus on learning everyone's name the first day, using their name when ever I speak to them (even if it means making mistakes), giving them a tour of the gradebook so they know how to earn the best grade they can, and doling out manageable assignments that teach them something and are easy to grade, so they can see the building of knowledge and grades quickly. There's a lot of collaborative interaction, too, that I encourage (see above).
(4) For group work: Try group work again (later in the term) but use a "lottery" system: simple way is a set of playing cards with equal numbers of spade, club, heart, diamond. The students pick a card and find the diamond group. When I teach computer hardware class, I often make these random groups with scraps of paper that say gold, silver, aluminum, copper, iron, etc. Easy to do and make groups of any number.
Note: People do not want to "choose sides", because it quickly becomes a race to get the smartest (or most popular) person on their team. You can do this method only after they have worked in random or assigned groups several times.
Hope these comments are helpful to you and to others.
Erla (soon to be at the Westin for the conference!)
