Character Building - Denmark

Our team was assigned with Character as our C.

In my subject there are written assignments, that the student’s hand in and I grade them. I think it’s like that in most schools.

I provide feedback and feedforward with focus points for the next assignment.

My issue is that the students don’t really focus on the feedback, but only on their grade andsometimes, instead of doing the work themselves, they plagiarize another assignment they find online to get good grades. I also have students that really doesn’t care that much about school and they hand in next to nothing. The problem in both cases is that they don’t focus on learning.

As an experiment and to build character I tested peer to peer grading. I gave them an assignmentas always, but instead of me grading the assignment they had to grade each other’s assignments. Idid not tell them in advance, so it came as a shock to some. The grade-oriented students were dissatisfied because, I as a teacher, would not grade their assignment, so they felt their hard work was wasted and the slackers in class did not want their fellow students to see they had not done the assignment in a proper way. This led to some conflict, but after a discussion about the fact that they actually attend school to learn something and this was a way to learn from each other,they started grading each other’s work. The graded assignments were sent to me as well. Ichecked the answers and the students were quite honest in the way they graded the work.

The next time they were due an assignment I warned them in advance and this time all of the students actually did the assignment in a satisfying way. So, the slackers actually did the work this time. I acknowledged their work and was satisfied, that more students did the assignment.

I wanted to experiment with collaboration and how this builds character, so the next assignment I introduced matrix groups. The assignment was around one specific subject, Social media, and there were 4 articles the students had to read and use in the assignment. Each quarter of the class were given one of the articles and had to read it and write down the main points. They were told that the homework was essential to the next assignment and others depended on them. During the next lesson the students were placed in groups, were everyone had worked with a different article:

During the lesson the students worked in groups and did the assignment together. After that theygraded each other’s assignments and the feedback was very detailed and the level of theassignment was very high.

The idea of all this was to focus on honesty, self-regulation and responsibility. It was a success, because the students relied on each other and all the students lived up to their responsibilities. We evaluated the process and the students were happy with it, especially the students that normally did not put in the work. The said it forced them to do it, because their friends were counting on them and they actually said that school was more fun when you prepare for class and do your homework. We talked about how this was a process to get them to do to work without anyone forcing them to do it, but because they wanted to do it to achieve a goal.

So, to test this the next assignment was done individually with me as the grader. All the students handed in their assignment and the general level of the assignments was improved especially the bottom half. So, one should think this was a success.

Since we have had 3 assignment that we have done the old way and I regret to say it, but some of the students have returned to their old bad habits. This shows that it is a process, that cannot be done with a single action, but something I have to incorporate in my teaching routine.