Group Activity

Available for UZH & KlickerUZH Catalyst

What is a Group Activity?

Group activities are one of the collaborative learning activities in KlickerUZH. They are designed to promote teamwork and collaboration among students. Group activities consist of a set of questions, explanation texts, and hints that are distributed among all participants. Participants work together to solve the questions and earn points for correct answers. Group activities are only available during a limited time window and can only be solved once. To be able to participate in a group activity, students need to be part of a group in the course. Groups can be created through the course overview on the student frontend.

Currently, the student submissions for group activities need to be graded manually, but possibilities to use automated grading approaches are being evaluated. To see what group activities look like from the student view, check out the corresponding section.

How can I create a Group Activity?

To create a Group Activity, navigate to the library and use the corresponding button at the top of the page. This opens the Group Activity wizard, which will guide you through the process of creating a Group Activity step by step. The different components / settings are explained in the following sections. For more information on the structure and didactical design of group activities, please also refer to the group activity use case.

Add the necessary metadata:

1. Name: The name of the Group Activity allows the user to distinguish the particular activity from others. It is therefore not visible to students participating in the activity. For recurring courses, we recommend adding information like the semester or lecture week to the name.
2. Display Name: The display name is shown to participants while the Group Activity is available.
3. Task Description: In contrast to other activity types, the task description is required for group activities, as it provides essential context and instructions for the participants and is shown separately above the section with the hints (provided in a later step).

Adjust the settings:

4. Course: Group Activities need to be assigned to an active course. This is necessary for students to be able to access the Group Activity through the student app after having created a group. If you need help creating a course, please review the tutorial on course management.
5. Start/End Dates: Group Activities are only available during a limited timeframe once published. Please choose corresponding dates and times for the start and end of the activity here. Group activities should only start after the group formation deadline to ensure that all groups have been finalized before the activity can be started and hints are distributed among its members. After the activity has expired, it will become available to you for manual grading.
6. Multiplier: When assigned to a gamified course, a multiplier can be set for the Group Activity. The selected factor will increase the maximum number of points that can be awarded during manual grading.

Choose your questions and define hints:

7. In the final step, you can add your prepared questions to the Group Activity using one of the following two methods. Group activities support all element types except for flashcards. All questions will be shown to the students below each other. If you need help with creating questions, please review the tutorial on element management.
   1. Drag & Drop: To add a new question to the stack, simply drag the question onto the plus sign beneath the desired stack.
   2. Select Questions: Select one or more questions that should be added to the Group Activity and use the button appearing next to the stack to add them.
   3. Ordering: To order individual elements within the stack, please use the provided arrows.
8. Hints: Group activities require you to provide at least two hints to solve the posed questions. These hints will be equally distributed between the participants of the group, encouraging them to work together to solve the questions. You can add as many hints as you like and select between "text hints" and "numerical hints" with an optional unit value.

How can I edit a Group Activity?

Like all other activities in KlickerUZH, Group Activities can be edited as long as they are in their draft state. Once published, Group Activities will remain in the scheduled state until the start date is reached, when their status automatically changes to published. While scheduled, Group Activities can still be unpublished to the draft state and edited. Once a Group Activity is published, its content can no longer be modified, since student submissions might be affected by the changes. The name and display name of the Group Activity may be changed at any time, using the pencil icon next to the activity name.

To edit the content of a Group Activity, open the actions dropdown and select the corresponding option. KlickerUZH will then automatically redirect you back to the library and open the familiar activity wizard used during creation with all information pre-filled. After making any changes to the metadata of the activity, its settings or the contained elements, make sure to save your changes in the last step of the wizard. For more information on how elements in a Group Activity are updated and how to handle outdated elements, please refer to the tutorial on element updates.

Beyond opening the editing wizard from the actions menu on any Group Activity, KlickerUZH also offers you several other options as part of the activity actions:

• Start any scheduled Group Activity immediately at any time before the official start date. This will change the status of the Group Activity to "Published" and make it available to the participants.
• Extend the duration of your Group Activity, while it is still running.
• End your Group Activity immediately, which will change its status to "Ended" and prevent further submissions.

• Publish it. Note that the publishing process makes the Group Activity available to all participants after the scheduled start date. Until then, the Group Activity will be in a "Scheduled" state and can be unpublished and edited again. The change from the scheduled state to the "Published" state is performed automatically at the scheduled start date and is irreversible.
• Unpublish scheduled Group Activities.
• Grade ended Group Activities (after the end date has been reached) or access the submissions and grading decisions (after the grading process has been finalized). For more information on the grading process, please refer to the section on grading group activities.
• Share access to your Group Activity with other users of KlickerUZH.
• View comments that were submitted by you or other users of KlickerUZH for this Group Activity.
• Delete your Group Activity with certain restrictions.

How can I publish a Group Activity and make it accessible to participants?

1. Once a Group Activity has been created, it will appear both in the activities list under the corresponding menu entry and in the course overview of the course it has been assigned to.
2. After navigating to the corresponding entry in the lists, you can publish it. Note that the publishing process makes the Group Activity available to all participant groups after the scheduled start date. Until then, the Group Activity will be in a "Scheduled" state and can be unpublished and edited again. The change from the scheduled state to the "Published" state is performed automatically at the scheduled start date and is irreversible.
3. Once published, all participants who are part of a group can access it through the group view on the course the activity is part of. From this view, it can be opened and started, at which point the hints will be distributed among the group members. Each group can submit one set of answers to the questions contained in the Group Activity.

How can I grade the submissions to a Group Activity?

After the Group Activity has ended, you can grade the submissions. To do so, navigate to the course overview or activities list and open the grading view on the corresponding Group Activity, where you can see the submissions of the individual participant groups and grade them. The following feedback options are available:

• Points (required): Points need to be awarded to the group's answer to each question. The maximum number of points for a particular question, computed as the product of the question and Group Activity multipliers and the default 25 points, is shown as a reference. The total number of points will automatically be computed for you.
• Answer Feedback (optional): You can provide feedback to the group's answer to each question. This feedback will be shown to the participants after the grading has been completed.
• Pass / Fail (required): Please specify at the bottom, if the group has passed or failed the Group Activity. This information will be shown to the participants after the grading has been completed.
• Submission Feedback (optional): Right below the pass / fail decision, you can provide feedback to the group's submission as a whole.

warning

Please note that grading a submission will not make it immediately visible to the students! Only once all the submissions for a Group Activity have a valid grading decision, the grading can be finalized using the corresponding button in the grading view. After finalizing the grading, the results will be visible to the participants.