Group Projects: Issues, Practice and Monitoring

Abstract

The contraints of GCSE, A level and some AS level assessments in CDT/Design/Design Technology force learners to work as individuals. The current assessment tail is wagging the learning dog. Whilst individual projects enable the overall assessment and labelling to be specific, the learning is completely counter to the real world: the trying out of ideas, the difficult questions, the bouncing of ideas, the arguing out of a solution often developed by informal and formal meetings using the spoken word. The current school system could be perceived as only the teacher being involved in such discussions with learners: what a burden, what a loss of a rich pool of ideas! It was disappointing to see the suggestion that individuals should have 'tasks individual to themselves' in a recent Technology Education report (Black, Harrison, etal, 1988). Denton's Group Task Management (1988) seems closer to the expectation of the working of the real world in Design and Technology.