Group-Based Projects In Metamorphism: Case Study
A.P. Boyle (University of Liverpool)
Geology & Man Exercise
Colin Dixon (Imperial College)
Environmental Impact Assessment
David Horne (University of Greenwich)
Mineral Exploration and Exploitation
Howard Colley (Oxford Brookes University)
MSci Team Project - guidelines for students on working in teams
Tony Kemp (University of Bristol
Teamworking | Good Practice Keywords | Authors | Titles | Institutions | Home
A.P. Boyle, University of Liverpool
Over the last 6 years, Liverpool Geology students have completed a group-based practical project in metamorphism, part of the second year module 2ES36: Magmatism, Metamorphism and Mineralisation. The project involves the study of about 30 pelite specimens, about one third of which also have thin sections. The specimens are located on a topographic map and the students have to:
The project is designed to make students gather a wide range of information (including forcing them to look at hand specimens), to analyse and synthesis it and then to report it in a succinct manner. Tasks 1-4 above can be divided up, but must be internally consistent, which provides a valuable check when assessing what is handed in. Tasks 5-7 force students to severely edit what they hand in, especially the 200 word summary limit. Task 8 forces the group to reflect on what they have done before handing it in.
Prior to 6 years ago, this project was done on an individual basis. Why did I change it? During modularisation of existing geology courses, the formal time available for practicals was decreased to comply with Faculty guidelines: 2ES36 changed from 24 lectures and 24 practicals over 24 weeks to 24 lectures and 12 practicals over 12 weeks. The halving of practical time meant that 8 metamorphic practicals became 4, and individual projects became unsustainable. As a result I changed the project to a group-based project running over 3 weeks, but just 2 practicals, using established 2nd year tutorial groups.. Various advantages accrued from doing this:
Student feedback has been generally positive. Some suggest that they would have preferred to do it alone, many said that they would have like more generous word and page limits. However, while having 10 groups as opposed to 50 individuals doing projects is obviously to my benefit, the students get plenty of practice working alone so I tell them it is for their ultimate benefit. The severe page and word limits are also to my advantage when marking. However, I have these to force the groups to decide what they consider to be really important, rather than just presenting everything they have seen.
In conclusion, I would suggest:
Teamworking | Good Practice Keywords | Authors | Titles | Institutions | Home
Colin Dixon, Imperial College - London
Summary: Each team of (final year) students works as a company bidding for a contract to give geological advice to a Local Authority. The exercise takes one week from the time the students are given their company and invitation to tender details until the final presentation. Assessment is based on memos written by the individual students at the end of the exercise.
Preparation: You will have been told which team you will be working with, the name of the organisation you represent and the room that has been allocated to you for your preliminary meeting at 09.00 on 30th May. At that time, you will meet with your colleagues in the team and will receive your team's invitation to tender for a contract, supporting information about the contract and a profile of the organisation you work for.
The aim of the first meeting is for you to work out who is going to do what in the 7 days before the presentations. Each team will need to study the geology of the county, its mineral resources, hydrogeology etc. and to study the mineral policy of the County Council. It is up to each team to decide who is the leader and how many and who are going to speak at the presentation and on what aspect. Remember that, if you are a six person team and you all want to speak, you have about 3 minutes each!
Each team will need to study the organisational profile and decide what special aspects of the organisation makes it ideally suited to be the contractor in terms of human and physical resources, location, past experience etc.
Presentation: You will note that you are expected to present your final proposals in a sealed envelope before the presentation. These will not be opened until after the oral presentations. They should be in the form of a list of fees and charges for the services required on a per day basis within the overall guidelines given in the documentation. The normal practice of governmental and local governmental bodies is to select the bidders who are judged competent to undertake the contract and to award the contract to the bidder who quoted the lowest price. It should be obvious that you should not communicate with members of other teams!
At 09.00 Wednesday 5th June, one member of each team should come to room 2.31 when a draw will be held for the order of presentations on the following day. At the time of your presentation on Thursday 6th June, the chosen leader of the team should begin by introducing the company/partnership and the members of the team and their expertise. The form of the presentation is up to the team, but remember that the evaluating panel will need to know about the company/partnership, its resources, location and how it proposes to undertake the contract work. The presentation should not last more than 20 minutes, allowing time for questions from the panel. An overhead projector will be available.
Assessment: The assessment of this part of the course will be on the basis of a short memorandum. This should be no more than one side of A4 in 12 pitch type, handed in by 17.00 on Friday 7th June to the top '3rd year' course-work box in room 2.30. The memorandum should be addressed to the Chair of the Board of Directors or Chief Partner of your organisation. If you were a member of the winning team, this should be an outline of why you think you were awarded the contract and how the award will affect the future of the organisation. If you were a member of a team that was not awarded the contract, then the memorandum should be a brief analysis of the shortcomings of the bid and proposals for changes which may enable your organisation to gain similar contracts in the future. This is your chance to show examiners how brief and concise you can write and you have 24 hours to write it!
Teamworking | Good Practice Keywords | Authors | Titles | Institutions | Home
David Horne, University of Greenwich
This unit is a complete Level 3 option available for undergraduates on a variety of degree pathways including Geography, Geology, Environmental Geology, Engineering Geology, Environmental Science, Environmental Biology, Environmental Control, and Natural Resource Management.
Teams of students carry out Environmental Impact Assessments of real proposed projects (facilitated by collaborating companies, county councils etc.). Supervising staff act as line managers but teams are responsible for organisation and time management. Teams prepare and submit proposals, carry out scoping exercises and acquire baseline data, liaise with the client and consultees as appropriate (and permitted by client), and prepare Environmental Statements, including submission and review of first draft, oral presentation of findings and submission of final report. The exercise takes 10-12 weeks with 3 hours (timetabled) + 3 hours (outside timetabled classes) per week including a one-day site visit. Students are normally allocated a time budget of 60 hours each.
A large proportion of staff effort must be expended in the months/weeks preceding the start of the unit; once it is running, the students are doing the work and staff are there to monitor, guide and assess. Contact must be made with potential "real-world clients" who are prepared to offer project information, access to sites, and their own time for liaison with student teams. Initial contact is usually made by telephone but experience has proved the necessity to personally visit all potential clients in order to discuss details of the aims and objectives of the course, information and liaison requirements, and give assurances that "pestering" by students will be kept to a minimum and that confidentiality will be respected. It takes time and patience to build a good relationship with a client; it would not be difficult for an uncontrolled or irresponsible student team to spoil that relationship. That being said, the benefits of such "real-world" links are clear: students have the opportunity to work on a real project rather than a classroom exercise (which looks good on a CV) and begin to make their own contacts with professionals - these factors themselves tend to encourage students to adopt a responsible attitude to what they are doing. Projects need to be reasonably achievable within the allotted time for the unit, and within reach of a one-day site visit. Examples have included proposed landfill waste disposal in existing quarries, extensions (e.g., landraising) to existing landfills, extensions to mineral extraction operations, waste-to-energy projects, road schemes (e.g., bypasses, river crossings), pipelines and marinas. Clients/providers have included county and district councils, waste management companies and mineral extraction companies.
Week 1. A start-up lecture may be given to introduce the students to EIA and provide them with essential information about procedures (this may not be necessary if students have already had such lectures in other units). It is helpful to have examples of real Environmental Statements to hand to give them some idea of what they are aiming at.
The practical aspects of the unit must then be introduced, explaining how it will be run, what students' responsibilities are, and any restrictions or provisos. It is usually unfeasible, for example, for students to carry out their own extensive baseline ecological surveys, undertake meaningful traffic counts or collect and analyse leachate samples from a landfill; they must be made aware of these limitations and how to get around them - either the client already has, and can provide, such data, or the team can make their acquisition a recommendation of their Environmental Statement. Consultation with statutory authorities is desirable but must always be checked with the client beforehand; consultation with members of the local public is almost always forbidden.
Teams must be arranged, ideally of 4-6 students. Teams containing members from different degree disciplines are to be encouraged (but this is not always practical).
The projects on offer must be introduced and described briefly; they can then be allocated to teams (or teams can bid for them) and each team can be given an "invitation to tender" and a starter pack (this tends to vary from a stack of maps and documents to a single page of descriptive information and a location map). They can then begin to prepare their proposal (to make the exercise more realistic they can select names for their "consultancy teams" and can include costings in their proposals).
Week 2. Each team must submit its proposal by a specified time, for appraisal by the supervising member of staff, who can give feedback and is able to ensure that the students have a reasonable understanding of what they are undertaking. At this point they can be given the contact name and number of their client, to whom one of them should telephone or fax to introduce the team. From here on they are responsible for managing themselves and getting on with the job, but should report back to supervisory staff for guidance at agreed intervals.
Weeks 3- end of unit. Site visits must be arranged with the client; a member of staff should preferably accompany each team for at least part of their site visit, and should ensure the completion of appropriate risk assessment forms and provision of transport, hard hats, high-visibility vests etc. as appropriate. First drafts of Environmental Statements must be appraised (rapid turn-around and helpful feedback are essential - the supervising staff must do this, the client is unlikely to have the time!) but formal assessment is not necessary. All teams should make an oral presentation of their findings, and attend those of the other teams; it is up to each team whether they do a team presentation or nominate one member to do it, but all members should be able to respond to questions afterwards. Assessment of the oral presentations should take account of the overall team effort - e.g., quality of oral presentation, audio-visual aids, ability to respond to cross-examination. When the final statements (together with individual folders containing time sheets and other evidence of contribution to team effort) are submitted it is worth bearing in mind that individual students may want their own copies (to show potential employers, for example) and should be forewarned to make appropriate arrangements; alternatively, teams can be instructed to submit an additional set of unbound pages which can then be copied and returned to them at a later date, together with a copy of any assessment information that can serve as a debriefing.
Assessment is 100% on coursework: 50% for the team effort (10% for the oral presentation, 40% for the final Environmental Statement) and 50% for individual effort. Each student must finally submit a folder containing evidence of their contribution to the team, which can include some form of peer assessment; although this folder will form the main basis of their individual assessment, it is important for staff to maintain regular contact with teams throughout the running of the unit in order to monitor and assess performance. Final debriefing is usually done by means of a brief written assessment of the Environmental Statement and it is therefore important that students get useful feedback during the exercise, not just at the end of it.
Teamworking | Good Practice Keywords | Authors | Titles | Institutions | Home
Howard Colley, Oxford Brookes University
The class is split into teams consisting of 5 members. Each teams acts as an exploration group for a mining company charged with organising and running an exploration programme on the island of Vanua Levu, Fiji. The database available to the teams to assist in the planning of exploration consists of the following:
This database and funding are typical of that available to exploration companies when they initiate work in remote areas. All the data are real so you will be simulating a true-to-life situation. The money is of course fictional!
To plan and run an exploration programme from the post-reconnaissance stage, involving detailed geochemical and geophysical surveying, through to the drilling stage. By the end of the exercise your team should be drilling on the prospect zone. The aim is for your team to devise a sound exploration plan that if carried through will adequately evaluate the potential of the area.
Give your company a suitable name.
Get together during weeks 1 and 2 to review the available data and select a target area and target type of deposit for exploration. Most exploration companies devise their exploration programmes with a particular type of mineral deposit in mind (e.g. epithermal gold, porphyry copper, massive sulphide).
See HC no later than Tuesday of week 2 to register a prospecting licence for your target area. Licences will be issued on a first-come, first-served basis so don't expect to get a licence for your target area if you leave it too late, some other team may have taken a licence out on that area. The maximum size for a licence area is 100 square kilometres.
Organise your team so that a team member covers the following topics:
Individual assessments will be based on these topics.
Your exploration programme must be carefully costed so that it does not exceed your budget. If you do wish to exceed your budget this is possible. You will have to make a case to the exploration manager of your company (=HC!) and this will need to be strongly justified. If your team exceeds its budget through bad financial management it will be penalised.
Once you have settled on a licence area and a target deposit you can call on the services of a consultant to advise you. The consultant is Professor H Colley (Oxford Brookes Bonanza Banking Inc.). Consultations can be booked during the practical slot of 3pm-6pm on Tuesday afternoons.
Your team will make a round-the table presentation on its exploration programme in week 8. Along with the seminar, it will submit to the Chief Inspector of Mines for Fiji (HC again!) an annual report.
20% on team round-the-table discussion and teamwork in devising the exploration programme.
20% for the individual contribution to the annual report, the individual
contributions fall under the following headings:
geological surveying
geochemical surveying
geophysical surveying
drilling programme
environmental impact
Teamworking | Good Practice Keywords | Authors | Titles | Institutions | Home
The aim of this project is to simulate the kind of situation which will arise continuously in your professional career. Working as a scientist for any organisation you will almost always be working on projects where you are part of a moderately sized team. In this team you will often be the only expert in your area, perhaps the only geologist. Other members of the team might be biologists, engineers, applied mathematicians or lawyers. In industry, teams often have 4-10 members; if they get any larger they tend to be broken into smaller units for the sake of efficiency.
Projects have been selected to try to simulate realistic situations and are intended to be broad in scope. This is so that the team of 3 or 4 can be divided into 3 or 4 'experts'. If you were working on, for example, a large construction project such as the siting of a bridge or power station you would need several kinds of expert. You would need a geologist to work on the geological suitability of the area, a separate person to look at the impact on the natural environment, another to look at the social impacts on the population, another to work on transport infrastructure etc.. We want each of you to play a different role, i.e. each person should become an expert on a different part of the problem.
In real life everyone has to do their job thoroughly, and there would be a Team Leader who would make sure that this has happened. If team members don't perform, then it's down to the Job Centre next week! In this exercise you have the choice to nominate your Team Leader or to work collectively without one. In either case you will need regular meetings (as in real life) to make that everyone knows how each part is progressing and to provide feedback and suggestions to one another. Meetings are necessary to build team spirit and confidence in one another.
It is very important that, at meetings, everyone is prepared to make constructive comments and suggestions. Simply whinging or keeping quiet when you know that the project is going in the wrong direction would have you associated with a disaster - not good for your career prospects.
Real life teams don't decide halfway through that person X is not pulling his or her weight so we'll work without him or tell her to do her own report. In real life you have to work with the people you've got. If people aren't performing properly then they have to be pushed, led or guided into the job expected of them. This is what we expect you to do.
Report writing is never left to the night before the contract finishes. At one of the early meetings the team would decide roughly which chapters will be needed and everyone would be assigned responsibility for writing part of it. There would be a requirement to produce a draft well before the deadline; in this case it is suggested you give yourselves a draft deadline 2 weeks before the final deadline. This gives plenty of time for discussion, further research and rewriting before final submission. If someone doesn't produce their bit then the other team members will have to cover for him or her. In real life this would mean a rapid exit from the company.
In real life teams don't divide marks between team members on the basis of who they thought did most work. The project is either a success for everyone or unsuccessful for everyone. In this spirit there will be no competition for marks. Each team member will get the same mark; it is up to you to maximise that mark collectively.
Teamworking | Good Practice Keywords | Authors | Titles | Institutions | Home