Month: July 2016

 

• What this is:
  • Groups of 4 to 6 students who are informally gathered in order to quickly discuss a couple questions prior to sharing responses to the whole class.
  • The buzz group discussions are aimed at exchanges of ideas, not at developing consensus.
• Preparation:
  • Design discussion prompts that are aimed at uncovering concepts, not facts and that can stimulate open-ended discussions.
• Procedure:
  • Forms groups, announce norms and time limits.
  • Ask group members to exchange ideas in response to prompts.
  • Check in on teams to see if time limits are too long or too short.
  • Ask students to share their key ideas to the whole group.
• Online implementation
  • Set up discussion forums for each prompt.
  • Require students to respond twice in each forum – once to the original prompt and once to another student’s response
• Variations and Extensions:
  • Ask students to use buzz groups to generate questions, share information, or solve problems.
  • Hold more relaxed buzz groups that do not respond to specific prompts, but discuss assigned readings in general or general course topics.
  • Snowball discussion – At the conclusion of each buzz group discussion, have 2 buzz groups combine and engage in a larger group discussion.  Then have these combine and discuss until the whole group = whole class.
• Implementation Tips:
  • To avoid students going off on tangents, use engaging prompts and time limits.
  • Be prepared to follow up buzz group discussion with related key issues – in case these issues did not come up in buzz group discussions.
  • Snowball Discussion tip – announce the format ahead of time and its purpose – to generate a lot of ideas in a short amount of time
  • Ask each buzz group to report out their most important idea that was not already mentioned by another buzz group representative
  • If buzz groups addressed different prompts, a member from each buzz group can form a panel.  The class can question the panel in order to learn the ideas generated by each buzz group.
  • Following buzz groups, follow up with Directed Paraphrasing.  Ask them to summarize the key points of the discussion for a student who was absent that day.

• What this is:
  • Students are each given a set number of chips.
  • They participate in discussions by surrendering one chip each time they speak.  They can only speak while they have chips.
• Preparation:
  • Gather chips – playing cards, poker chips, paper clips, etc.
  • Design a discussion prompt that can stimulate open discussion.
• Procedure:
  • Form student groups.  Hand out 3 – 5 chips per student.
  • Ask students to participate equally in the discussion and use the chips to track each person’s contributions.  Each participant surrenders 1 chip per contribution and can not talk after he or she runs out of chips.
  • When the chips are done, can redistribute chips and repeat protocol with another discussion prompt.
• Online implementation
  • Waiting for all students to respond prior to leaving another comment can be very inconvenient and unwieldy.
  • Instead, set ground rules for the number of length of responses and enforce repeated violations with private messages.
• Variations and extensions
  • Give each student chips of a different color.  Ask students to examine the colors in surrendered chips and reflect on how discussion has gone.
  • Can suggest that students current a chip every 3 to 5 minutes in the discussion
  • Give each student 1 chip and do not redistribute chips until all are surrendering.  This version could be good for brainstorming discussions.
  • Instead of chips, assign a record to keep a tally of students’ responses using a tally checklist.
• Implementation tips
  • This protocol can be good to structure discussions on controversial topics and within teams that do not tend to have full participation of all team members in team discussions.
  • Use this protocol to build insight into the ways teams have discussions
  • Use sparingly because it can lead to superficial conversations if overused.
  • After the discussion, have students write a reflective essay that has them reflect on their performance during the discussion and set goals for improvement.

• Collaboration articles
• Assessing skill in application & performance (1 of 2)

 

 

• What this is:
  • Students respond to a prompt individually and then with a partner before sharing ideas with the whole class
• Preparation:
  • Develop engaging prompts that have multiple possible responses
  • Develop a plan for gathering responses
• Procedure:
  • Pose question to class and provide time for students to devise individual responses
  • Pair students and ask them to share their responses
    • If they disagree, ask them to explain and clarify their responses
    • If possible, ask pairs to develop a joint response to the prompt
  • Gather responses from each pair and share with the whole class
• Variations and Extensions:
  • Export “think” step to out of class time by asking students to prep their response to a question outside class time
  • Give students time to write out their responses – Write, Pair, Share
  • Ask pair to share their ideas with another pair before sharing their ideas with the whole class
• Implementation Tips:
  • Give students sufficient time to develop their individual and paired responses – use volume ofsxall group responses to gauge appropriate time for the latter
  • While reporting out responses to the whole group, ask each pair to share their most important point that has not already been shared by another pair
  • To encourage attentive listening, randomly call on pairs and ask them to summarize the previous pair’s response before sharing a new point
  • For challenging responses, pair this technique with the Minute Paper with a prompt such as what aspect of the prompt was the most challenging for you to answer and why?

Structuring discussions to ensure active participation by ALL students can have numerous benefits for students.  Students can learn how to explain and clarify their ideas, become aware of their assumptions, learn multiple perspectives, and connect new and prior knowledge.  Teachers can encourage students who are used to having a passive role in learning activities to become active participants of discussions by implementing  protocols that  promote active participations for ALL.

 

• Decide what learning activities can benefit from discussions
• Select the discussion style that goes best with the type of ideas targeted for discussion
• Design a discussion prompt that can elicit multiple responses
• Design a followup activity that can be used to process ideas generated by discussions

• Implement the discussion protocol of your choice
• Implement another activity that promotes reflection upon or furthering processing of information gathered by discussion activity

• Decide which discussion protocols are the most effective tools to practice speaking / thinking in the targeted discipline and incorporate these into class routines
• Use student feedback to refine implementation of protocols

• Collaboration articles
• Assessing understanding
• Quick Writes (2 of 2)

Chapter 1 from Barkley, Elizabeth F., K. Patricia Cross, and Claire Howell.  Collaborative Learning Techniques: A handbook for College Faculty.  San Francisco, CA: Josey-Bass, 2005. Print.

 

• Essential features of collaborative learning:
  • Intentional design
    • teachers use intentional structures that encourage students to learn in groups
  • Equitable engagement / co-laboring
    • all group members are actively engaged and provide meaningful contributions to the learning task(s)
  • Meaningful learning
    • students working in groups deepen their understanding of course objectives

• Cooperative learning:
  • students cooperate to achieve a common goal / task
  • teacher retains traditional role of subject matter expert
  • often students are striving toward single correct answer or best solution known by teacher
  • emphasizes cooperative and harmony among group members
• Collaborative learning:
  • based in social constructivism, knowledge is constructed by the development of a consensus among members of a group that includes students and teacher
  • teacher, along with students, is a member of a learning community that is co-constructing knowledge
  • unlike cooperative learning which emphasizes harmony, members of groups may engage in debate and dissent prior to achieving consensus
  • group work addresses questions with ambiguous answers – answers are subject to doubt and must be backed by judgements grounded in evidence

• Formal groups:
  • work together for the duration of a learning task which may last from one class period to several weeks
  • accomplish shared goals, utilize varied strengths of team members, maximize learning for all
• Informal groups:
  • temporary groups that last for one discussion or one class period
• Base groups:
  • long-term groups with stable membership
  • aimed at providing long term support and sense of belonging to members

1. Positive interdependence:
   • success of individuals and the group are intertwined
2. Promotive interaction
   • students are expected to actively support each other by sharing knowledge, skills and resources
3. Individual and group accountability:
   • students are assessed individually and and as a group
   • each member is held accountable to group goals
4. Development of teamwork skills:
   • students are taught content AND collaboration skills
5. Group processing:
   • group members reflect on their how they are collaborating and plan next steps to improve their teamwork

• Some Benefits of Collaborative Learning:
  • prepares students for teamwork that occurs in future careers
  • actively involves students in learning
  • helps students appreciate diversity of perspectives
  • honors and utilizes individuals’ past academic / life experiences
• Connection to Research:
  • Neurological:
    • students build their brains (develop more neurological pathways) as they interact with other people and ideas
  • Cognitive:
    • students learn by developing schemata – networks of connected bits of information
    • what students are able to learn is highly dependent on what they already know (current schemata)
    • active ideas (as opposed to ideas) are well integrated into schemata and can be related to new and old ideas and problems
  • Social:
    • zone of proximal development – what students are able to do with the assistance of teachers or more capable peers

• a lot of research has shown that college students grow more and are more successful when they interact with faculty and peers in / our of classroom on academic work
• one of the most effective methods of instruction is students teaching other students
• research has shown success with collaborative learning techniques over a variety of grade levels and subjects
• cooperative learning arrangements have been shown to be more effective than competitive and individualistic structures – leads to better solutions, better transfer of knowledge, higher levels of reasoning and higher achievement
• research has shown that cooperative learning seems to have best impact when groups are recognized based on the individual learnings of members

Collaborative learning techniques help build students’ collaborative skills and help students deepen their knowledge with the assistance of their collaborative partners.  Collaborative learning experiences are “deliberately” designed to promote deeper learning, group/individual accountability, group processing, and active and equitable contributions of group members.  The 5 essential elements of collaborative learning (see above) can be used to design, evaluate, and optimize collaborative learning experiences.

 

Preparation Steps

• Research and design activities that promote the 5 essential elements of collaborative learning
• Evaluate past collaborative scaffolding using the 5 essential element of collaborative learning – use this assessment to improve scaffolding

• Implement scaffolding that teaches students the 5 essential element of collaborative learning and gives them practice / reflection opportunities
• Design learning experiences that use collaboration to build content skills.
• Give students opportunities to reflect on how their group processes are helping or detracting from learning and plan groups’ next steps

• Establish routines that promote 5 essential elements of collaborative learning
• Provide regular opportunities throughout projects for students to give, receive and reflect upon collaborative feedback from their teammates.  Guide students to use this feedback to improve their collaboration skills.

• Collaboration articles