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Small Group Instructional Diagnosis (SGID)
is a technique for eliciting feedback from participants in a
course or workshop that should help to improve that program,
immediately (if the SGID is done mid-way through the
program) and the next time the same program is offered.
Defining characteristics of "SGID":
- The event is scheduled.
Often an external facilitator is used as a
leader. The SGID usually occurs in the
middle of the term or workshop, but can (also)
be done at the end.
- Divide participants into
small groups (if the whole group is 20 or more,
the small groups are usually around 5 people
each)
- Ask the participants to
individually write answers to a short list of
questions about how the program can be improved.
For example, they may be asked what elements
should be maintained, what should be changed,
and what should be added. This period of quiet
writing helps generate critiques, insights and
suggestions that might never be voiced if the
groups began talking immediately.
- Ask participants in each
group share their answers and to agree on a
shared answer to each question their small
group. By discussing
their answers and agreeing on a single list,
participants clarify their thinking and
'outlier' critiques are usually screened out.
Sometimes the tables are asked to agree on a
short list of items, sometimes to agree on just
one answer to each question they've been asked.
- Transmit the answers from
each group to the leader of the program in a way
that maintains anonymity of the individual
participants. Using a facilitator with the
instructor absent is one way to do this.
Assigning scribes to each small group who use
laptops to fill in online surveys is another
strategy for maintaining anonymity.
- The leader responds to the
participants, demonstrating that the feedback
has been understood and will be used
appropriately.
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Task for this brief hybrid workshop
for faculty.
Preparation: Create handouts including a
description of SGID and a copy of a recommended SGID form
(e.g., this Flashlight Online 2.0
template. (The bracketed passages suggest areas where
the instructor or facilitator should do some editing before
doing SGID with participants in their course or workshop.)
Depending on how much time faculty
participants have, this ARQ workshop could include one or
more of the following elements:
- Before the ARQ workshop, and
again at the beginning of the workshop, read
about SGID (e.g.,
this University of Washington web page or
this summary from the University of Arizona).
- If your workshop has more
than, say, six academic staff participating,
split into small groups.
- (In your small groups),
discuss questions that you'd each ask when using
SGID. (Here is one set
of questions, in a Flashlight Online 1.0
template. Here's the
Flashlight Online 2.0 template, with
slightly different forms of the same questions.
Here are some different sets of SGID questions,
from the University of Washington) What
questions would your SGID ask? why those
questions?
- When an instructor does SGID
without a facilitator, or when the workshop is
online, it's useful to use online forms in order
to maintain anonymity and to display feedback
quickly to the whole class or workshop. To see
one way to do this, watch
this eClip
demonstrating, step by step, how to use
Flashlight Online 1.0 to create response sheets
for small groups in your program. We'll
prepare a similar eClip for using the SGID
template in Flashlight Online 2.0 shortly.
- Discuss how circumstances
would affect your choice about whether to use an
outside facilitator or whether to facilitate the
SGID yourself.
- How would you do SGID if
your course or workshop participants only met
online?
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