More understanding of "the crit"

A small 'aha' moment about what is happening during "the crit" I described earlier - two things:

• The teacher(s) assess the student's work, tell them what is good about it and where it can be improved. (That bit is obvious!)
• The student experiences this process for their own work and sees it happening to other students. In this way they learn about how to critique generally; the sorts of criteria their work is judged on, things which tend to be praised, things which tend to be frowned upon, different ways of solving different problems. (That was my 'aha' moment!)

In this way they both learn how to improve their current work and how to critically evaluate their future work. Individual feedback wouldn't be as effective, being part of a group is vital, but students don't seem to understand group work. There is a constant complaint from Lecturers that students do not turn up to organised teaching sessions, but are constantly clamoring for individual attention.

Again, during the H&S training session I observed, the small group of students who attended got to see a range of common problems and solutions to them which would have been much more limited if they had been alone. They clearly did not understand this and had a tendency to wander off or be looking elsewhere whilst the others had their go.

I wonder if simply making this explicit to the students would make a difference, or if something more sophisticated with group work and peer support needs to be done?