How To Write A Midterm Review

I am reflecting on a midterm review session I co-hosted with my fellow peer mentors just this evening. I, along with the other mentors were extremely excited for the session we had planned for the BIOL 315 (Quantitative Biology) students. Recalling Bruffee, the author of “The Art of Collaborative Learning: Making the Most of Knowledgeable Peers”, he had stated that “Students learn better through non-competitive collaboration group work than in classrooms that are highly individualized . . .” (pg. 44). Based on this, we decided to do three group activities that would gauge the understanding of the students of their course material. We thought this serve as a better alternative to boringly going over each question on the practice midterm we had sent to them, in which nothing would be gained by the students.
Although we never stated in the e-mail we had sent the students that we would explicitly be going over the practice midterm, many students had that expectation. From the moment we divided the students into separate groups, the looks of skepticism and annoyance immediately fell over their …show more content…
. . students may at first be wary and not overly eager to collaborate” (Bruffee, 1987). I believe that this prevented students from having the most effective learning experience out of the activities – that is, their refusal to engage with strangers. However, as stated by Taylor (2011), “After graduation, [the students] will not necessarily always be working with their best friend or fraternity brother” (pg. 219). Based on this, I still feel justified for structuring the session the way it was, because that was an accurate representation of a world that is becoming increasing collaborative. In order to prepare students for the real world, where they will be working with complete strangers no matter which career path they choose, I felt the group work was a good decision, even if the students may not had enjoyed