Hello everyone,

My apologies that I did not get this to you last week – I had some tech troubles coincide with some personal obligations and couldn’t get to this until tonight. As such, please take until this coming Wednesday to complete the assignment.

Your final assignment has two parts – to receive full credit you must complete both.

1) The first is a reflective post, with the category Blog Entry 3, where you reflect on the work that you have done in this course. Try to avoid simple observations such as “I liked this…” “I thought this course was good because…” and instead think about what you have learned and how you have learned it. Try also to avoid statements that begin with “Overall” or “Altogether”; think about specifics instead. We are asking you to do some writing here that is known as “meta-cognitive,” meaning you are thinking about how you are thinking (whoa….right?).

  • Consider what you’ve learned (or not), and how you learned it, and whether that experience was meaningful or impactful because of the way you learned it.
  • Consider all the assignments and work you’ve done, not just the two big projects.
  • Consider not only the content of the course (ways of doing science, all the factual information, etc.), but also other less obvious elements of learning, such as working in a group, working on multiple simultaneous projects, managing the poster design/PowerPoint presentations, research, etc.

This post should be about 500 words maximum, but it’s OK if you go a little over.

2) The second is a peer assessment, in which we would like you to candidly assess both your own performance as well as the other members of your group. This will be done by completing the form below. Please know that this is 100% private, and no one but Dr. Greer and Jake can see it. We want your honest assessment of the group work breakdown, not to penalize any group members who did not pull their weight, but to understand how we can make group work function better in the future.

Have a great break!

Peer/Self Assessment

Complete the following assessment honestly and completely.

  • Assess your own performance on a 1 to 5 scale where 1 means “poor performance” and 5 means “excellent performance,” in accordance with what you feel your overall contribution to the two projects was (tasks performed, level of input and cooperation, leadership, participation in strategy meetings, logistics, poster design, etc).
  • Indicate something about yourself that made you a helpful group participant. Try to be as honest as possible about your strengths.
  • Indicate something about yourself that made you a challenging group participant. Try to be as honest as possible about your weaknesses.

  • In the next section, you will assess your peers using the same rubric.

    Complete this for every other member of your team.
  • Assess your colleague's performance on a 1 to 5 scale where 1 means “poor performance” and 5 means “excellent performance,” in accordance with what you feel this person's overall contribution to the two projects was (tasks performed, level of input and cooperation, leadership, participation in strategy meetings, logistics, poster design, etc).
  • Assess your colleague's performance on a 1 to 5 scale where 1 means “poor performance” and 5 means “excellent performance,” in accordance with what you feel this person's overall contribution to the two projects was (tasks performed, level of input and cooperation, leadership, participation in strategy meetings, logistics, poster design, etc).

  • Final Open-Ended Questions