Best Practices, Pedagogy, Small Teaching Tip, Teaching Advice

Small Teaching Tip #10: Creating Connections

One of the most challenging aspects of education is getting our students to use prior knowledge and to connect that with the new information we are trying to teach them.  It seems as if students walk into each class and compartmentalize it in their brain, often, it feels as if they do this for each unit within a single class.  So how can we have them see the bigger picture?  How can we get them to view their education as a living, changing whole instead of a segmented path?  James M. Lang (2016) offers some tips and strategies to bring in prior knowledge before building upon it.

  • Have the students take a short quiz prior to class asking them to pull from prior knowledge, use the first few minutes of class to go over the results.
  • In the beginning of class tell the students what the lesson is about and have them write down everything they know about the topic, take the next 5 minutes to solicit responses.  
  • At the start of the semester pretest or use group activities to assess prior knowledge
  • After the first class of the semester have the students write down three things the know about the subject matter and three things they would like to learn, discuss these during the second class.
  • Have the students create a minute thesis connecting different themes throughout your course.  You can have them do this in a few minutes or over a whole class period.  Have them share their ideas and discuss it as a class.
  • Create concept maps linking together ideas throughout the course.  Have the students share and explore their peer’s ideas.  They can add to these maps for the whole semester or make new ones depending on the topic at hand.

Remember, as experts in your field it is easy for you to draw connections and see the big picture but for your students it may take more time and coaching.  Make sure to provide the framework for these connections and refer back to them often.  Again, James M. Lang (2016) offers “Quick Tips” on helping your students to connect concepts.

  • Ask students about their prior knowledge at the beginning of the course with oral questions or a “class knowledge dump”
  • Give students the scaffolding or framework of your lecture ahead of class time and let them fill it in using their prior knowledge.
  • Offer examples from everyday life and allow students to offer their own.  Help them to connect the “real world” with class concepts.

In order for us to really educate our students we need to help them see the bigger picture, help them create connections and guide them along the path of a whole, connected, educational career.


This post is part of a series which presents low risk, high reward teaching ideas, inspired by James Lang’s book Small Teaching: Everyday Lessons from the Science of Learning.

Assessment, Best Practices, Collaboration, Distance Ed, Events, Innovative Instruction, Pedagogy, Teaching Advice

DE 2.0 Workshop: Humanizing Your Online Course

humanize-your-content-900x423
“I miss getting to really know my students. It’s just not the same.”

“There’s no way of knowing who is on the other side of the screen.”

Sound familiar? If so then you aren’t alone.

Not only do some instructors feel this way about online learning, but students do as well. Often they feel isolated, disconnected, and insignificant. These feelings of seclusion can often lead to decreased motivation, attention, and engagement. As part of the online learning process, it is vital to intentionally design elements to make sure that that the human connection isn’t lost in the online learning process.

 

What is Humanizing?

Humanizing your course involves considering the teaching presence, social presence, and cognitive presence of all participants in order to build community and enhance communication. The ultimate goal of this process is to make online education as personal and individualized as possible while building relationships between your students, the content, and yourself.

About the DE 2.0 Workshop

This 3-week long, self-paced session will take you through some strategies that you can use in your online class to make you and your students feel more connected. While this course is held fully online, it does contain three optional synchronous sessions with experts in humanizing online education from around the world!

You might be interested in this session if:

  • You feel you are not connecting with your students in your online class the way you do in your face-to-face class.
  • You feel like your online class lacks community.
  • You want to make your course more engaging and personal for the students.

 

humanizing-youronline-course

Workshop Goals

  • Discover the elements of teaching presence, social presence, and cognitive presence as it applies to the online learning environment, particularly in the areas of facilitation, learning domains, and course design.
  • Research assessment and engagement strategies, community building/maintaining platforms, and technology tools for increasing the humanized element.
  • Discuss elements of humanized learning with other faculty teaching online at College of Charleston.
  • Ask questions, exchange ideas, and meet other CofC faculty teaching distance education courses.
  • Create engaging content and online activities that foster the elements of teaching presence, social presence and cognitive presence.

Learning Outcomes

  • Explore instructional theories that lead to a more humanized online class.
  • Identify areas of your course that can be made learner centered and/or interactive.
  • Revise and/or create course interactions, including social learning experiences, content delivery methods, and assessment of student learning.

Register now on TLT’s DE Readiness Blog!

Applications are open until January 31, 2017!

 

Small Teaching Tip Number 5 focuses on using Google Docs and Slides to make in-class group work more productive and efficient.
Collaboration, Google, Google Apps, Productivity, Small Teaching Tip, Teaching Advice

Small Teaching Tip #5: Make Group Work More Efficient with Google Apps

Collaboration and project management are important skills for college students to learn.  Unfortunately, many students grumble about group work and faculty spend too much time managing logistics.  Wouldn’t it be nice if there were tools that could make in-class group work more efficient and productive?

I have a possible solution for you!  Google Apps!

All CofC students and faculty have free access to Google Apps for Education using their College email address and password.

Here are two ways you can use Google Docs and Slides to make group work more efficient:

Share Templates

In-class group work is most effective if students are given clear instructions, including the goals of the activity and expectations for a deliverable.  Without purpose or guidelines, students will be less productive and more easily distracted.

One way to provide structure is to create an outline, template, or worksheet to guide students’ work.  If you create this handout in Google Docs, you can easily share it with students who can then type on the document as they work with their teams.

But, Jessica, wouldn’t that mean all students would be typing on the same document?

Yes, unless you make this tiny but powerful change to the document URL: delete the word “edit” from the end of the URL and replace it with the word “copy.”

Sharing clean copies of Google Docs with students

When students click on the URL you’ve shared with them, they will be asked to make a clean copy.  Now, each student or each group can work on their own document.

Ask your students to share their document with you so you can see what they’ve accomplished during class.  And if groups run out of time and need to finish outside of class, every group member can contribute from their own dorm room or apartment (because Google Drive is cloud-based).

Share a Slide Master

After students complete an in-class activity or assignment, do you ask groups to present their work to the rest of the class?  This form of debriefing or “reporting out” encourages students to work harder because they’ll have to stand in front of the room to present to their peers.  It also gives students much-needed opportunities to practice their public speaking skills, which are typically quite weak.

But if you ask students to create slides in Powerpoint, every student would have to email their file or save it to a thumb drive and then open it on the teacher station computer.  This requires too much precious class time.

Instead of using Powerpoint, create an empty slide show in Google Slides.  If you want students to design their own slides, simply create a presentation with blank slides (one slide per student or one slide per group, for example).  If you want students to include certain pieces of information on their slides, create a template.  You can then duplicate that template slide for as many students or groups that you have.

Next, give your students editing rights and share the URL with them (watch the animated GIF below).  Every student can now access that slide deck during class and work on their individual slides.   When it’s time to present to the class, you only have to open the one Google Slides presentation and the entire class’ work is right there!

Changing share settings for a Google Doc


We hope you found this week’s Small Teaching Tip helpful.  This post is part of a series which presents low risk, high reward teaching ideas, inspired by James Lang’s book Small Teaching: Everyday Lessons from the Science of Learning.

Small Teaching Tip 3: The first five minutes of class should be devoted to engaging students' attention, setting goals for the class period, and activating prior knowledge.
Best Practices, Pedagogy, Small Teaching Tip, Teaching Advice

Small Teaching Tip #3: The First Five Minutes of Class

The crux of a class period, and perhaps the most challenging to plan, are the beginning and ending.  Unfortunately, these are the two parts of a lesson that faculty typically devote the least amount of attention.  Often, the first few minutes of class are spent taking attendance, setting up technology, or rattling off reminders.  This type of housekeeping is necessary, but it shouldn’t be the only way you begin class.  As Kate Sussman, Professor of Biology at Vassar College, points out, we all need time to “warm up”:

“Maybe they just woke up. Maybe they rushed over from their previous class. Maybe they just finished a big paper or assignment. Whatever the cause, it’s most likely that your students are distracted and not really mentally ready to be in your classroom when they first get there. We need to add a little transition time to the beginning of class to help our students get mentally ready to focus.”

To prepare students for learning, the beginning of a lesson should prioritize engaging students’ attention, setting goals for the class period, and activating students’ prior knowledge.  Here are a few simple methods to accomplish these aims:

Incorporate teasers

Teasers are provocative statements, sometimes called “hooks,” that serve to grab students’ attention and draw them into the upcoming lesson.  To be most effective, the teaser must clearly relate to the subject matter and it must deliver.  If you use a teaser that makes students wonder what the heck you’re talking about, it will simply confuse rather than pique curiosity.  And if your lessons don’t live up to the hype you’ve built, the anticlimax will eventually cause students to tune out.

A classic way to begin class is to ask a question that creates a compelling need for students to know the answer, appealing to what Carnegie Melon University professor George Loewenstein calls the “curiosity gap.”  You could also begin with an unusual photo, humorous video clip, perplexing statement, or a shocking statistic.  I once had a professor who began each class with a promise, such as “by the end of class today, I promise you will be equipped with three strategies for handling passive-aggressive people.”  He told me that making such promises gives students confidence that they will leave each class with something useful and it also holds him accountable for reaching those objectives.

Close the circle

You are probably much more organized than I am, but I sometimes feel like my lectures lack enough structure and, therefore, veer off course.  One strategy to address this comes from James Lang, author of Small Teaching.  He suggests providing students with a few questions to guide their homework and asks them to bring their responses to class.  Ideally, the questions you ask cannot be answered by simply looking up a definition in the textbook and also require students to connect the current topic with those you’ve discussed previously.

At the beginning of the next class, display those questions so students can refer to them as they enter the classroom and get settled.  As you take attendance and complete other housekeeping tasks, ask students to turn to a neighbor and share their responses.  Then, towards the end of the period, return to the questions and ask if students’ responses have changed since listening to your lecture.  This could spark discussion or serve as an exit ticket.  Using these questions at the beginning and end of class metaphorically “closes the circle” and reminds students that each session has a clear purpose and structure.   

Activate prior knowledge

According to James Lang, research suggests that whatever knowledge students bring into a course has a major influence on what they take away from it.  Thus, student learning can be improved by consistently revisiting, not just what they learned in the previous class, but what they already know about the subject matter.  So at the beginning of class, you could say something like: “Today we are going to focus on _____. What do you know about _____ already? What have you heard about it in the media, or learned in a previous class?”  

Another memory recall strategy is to simply ask students to remind you of the key points from the previous class period.  But rather than calling on a single student, consider asking all students to participate such as prompting them to complete a “minute paper,” draw a process, create a diagram, or illustrate a main point.  Any effort students make to recall course content — without the help of notes or textbooks — benefits their learning.  

No matter the strategy you choose, I challenge you to put more thought into how each of your class periods begin.  Those few minutes offer us a fertile opportunity to build anticipation and prepare students for learning.  How do you start class?  Please share!

 


This post is part of a series which will present low risk, high reward teaching ideas.  Inspired by James Lang’s book Small Teaching: Everyday Lessons from the Science of Learning, this series will inspire you to implement small but powerful changes to your teaching.

instructional technology, Productivity, Teaching Advice, Tech Generation, TLT

Start your semester off right!

Starting a new semester can be daunting but let us help you with our Start of Semester Checklist!  This checklist gives you a list view of important tasks to complete to make sure your semester starts off smoothly, it also tells you how to complete most tasks.  Some of the tasks and include: Verifying your course shell has been created, confirming your course start date, enrolling non-students into your course, cross listing, and building course content and student enrollment.  Let us make it easier for you, click on our checklist!

 

Start of Semester Checklist 

 

Best Practices, Distance Ed, Events, Pedagogy, Training Opportunities

Wanted! CofC DE Instructors Interested in Professional Development

TLT is proud to announce the start of a new training opportunity for online faculty!

DE 2.0 is a series of immersive workshops that will be delivered largely asynchronously online. These sessions will be focused on topic specific items for faculty who are currently teaching online and want to dig a little deeper into updated technology and pedagogy for online learning.Now that you’ve taken the DE Readiness Course and taught online, what do you want to learn more about?

2.0 Deuces wild flyer

One workshop will be offered each semester starting Fall 2016.

Here are some examples of faculty nominated workshop topics that will be offered:

2.0 Card table

More information about these workshops will be available on TLT’s DE Readiness Blog by August 15th.

Do you have a session topic you’d like to suggest for the future? Or a resource that you’d like to see?

Visit http://blogs.charleston.edu/dereadiness/de-2-0/ and fill out the suggestion form.
Small Teaching Tip: Give students more control of their learning and allow more opportunities for students to voice their ideas.
Small Teaching Tip, Teaching Advice

Introducing TLT’s Small Teaching Tips!

Have you ever uttered these words (perhaps after attending a TLT training)?

“I’d love to try that new tech tool or teaching strategy, but I just don’t have the time to research it or make the necessary changes in my classes.”

We hear you.  Making dramatic changes to your classes requires a lot of time and energy that you don’t typically have.  But that doesn’t mean your classes have to remain the same semester after semester.  Powerful pedagogical improvements can be made by implementing small, incremental changes.

To get you started, TLT is introducing a new series called “Small Teaching Tips” which will present low risk, high reward teaching ideas.  Inspired by James Lang’s book Small Teaching: Everyday Lessons from the Science of Learning, this series will inspire you to experiment with pedagogical strategies without becoming overwhelmed.

So keep an eye on our blog (as well as Twitter, Pinterest, and Yammer) for new tips!


Small Teaching Tip #1

One way instructors can build a positive learning environment and encourage students to take more responsibility for their learning is to give them greater control, such as seeking more input from them or allowing them to choose among options based upon their own goals and interests.

Small Teaching Tip: Give students more control of their learning and allow more opportunities for students to voice their ideas.

Giving students more control does not mean we are giving away all control or that we are allowing them to cherry-pick only the content that interests them.  Instead, it simply means giving students greater voice.  Instructors can do this in small ways.  Here are a few options:

Allow students to contribute to the syllabus:

Hand out a draft syllabus on the first day of class, then present the areas you want students to contribute to (You can obviously set limits and define certain rules that are non-negotiable for you). For example, leave open 10 percent of the grade for an undetermined assignment and have students decide together what that assignment will be (such as a multimedia project instead of a research paper).  Or, leave a few class periods open on the course schedule and allow the students to vote on which topics will be discussed on those days.

Create a class constitution with your students:

In groups, ask students to brainstorm a set of rules to govern the class.  Ask them to think of behaviors, attitudes, and policies that have helped or hindered their learning in other classes. Use this information to create a set of “do’s and don’ts.”  I’m often surprised by the high expectations students set for themselves and one another when we complete this activity.  They often discuss being distracted by the classmates who show up late or online shop on their laptops, so they set rules about these behaviors.  

It’s important that the class constitution also includes expectations of the professor.  The rules don’t just apply to the students.  I often divide the whiteboard into two columns and write “expectations of the instructor” on one side and “expectations of peers” on the other.  This demonstrates that I view our class as a community and that I am not “above” the rules.

Allow students to generate exam questions:

Take 30 minutes of class time and ask students to work in groups to generate exam questions.  Then tell them 10% of the exam questions will come from the list they generated.  This will not only give them some sense of control over the test, but also will serve as an excellent review activity.

What are ways you encourage student voice in your classes?  Please share!

Teacher and students engaged in discussion
Assessment, Best Practices, Pedagogy, Teaching Advice

The Essential Role of Memory Retrieval in Student Learning

Too often, at professional development workshops or on education blogs, there’s an emphasis on designing courses that encourage students to reach the summit of Bloom’s pyramid.  There’s absolutely nothing inadvisable about helping students analyze, evaluate, and explore.  But in our race to the top, we often overlook the importance of remembering, understanding, and even applying (especially in our upper-level courses).  According to cognitive psychologists, this is a mistake that can have damaging effects on student learning.  Without foundational knowledge, it is difficult, if not impossible, for students to demonstrate higher order levels of thinking.  According to cognitive psychologist Daniel Willingham:

“Thinking well requires knowing facts, and that’s true not simply because you need something to think about. The very processes that teachers care most about–critical thinking processes such as reasoning and problem-solving–are intimately intertwined with factual knowledge that is stored in long-term memory (not just found in the environment).” (quoted in Lang, 2016, p. 16)

Without a solid understanding of basic concepts, theories, and processes, a student cannot think creatively or critically about a discipline’s body of knowledge.  This academic groundwork allows students to integrate new knowledge in deeper ways and make more sophisticated connections.

Unfortunately, students often make poor choices when they attempt to learn new information.  Have you ever asked your students (maybe after the class did terribly on an exam) how they studied?  Often, students will say things like “I re-read my notes” or “I made flash cards and read them over and over again.”  Research has demonstrated that these are some of the least effective strategies for committing information to long-term memory.  Thus, if we care about our students’ learning, then we must design our courses in ways that actually help students learn, not simply cram and forget.  

Exams are considered by many to be the gold standard of measuring student learning.  However, most instructors are not familiar with the cognitive science literature and, therefore, do not design exams that actually result in student learning.  Better understanding the retrieval effect (sometimes called the testing effect) will help us to create more effective assessments.

How many times have you claimed your “brain is full” or “you can only remember so much”?  Our long-term memories are actually capable of holding quite a lot of information.  Cognitive psychologist Michelle Miller argues “the limiting factor is not storage capacity, but rather the ability to find what you need when you need it.  Long-term memory is rather like having a vast amount of closet space–it is easy to store many items, but it is difficult to retrieve the needed item in a timely fashion” (quoted in Lang, 2016, p. 28).  She explains that each time we recall a piece of information, we strengthen the neural pathways that move the information from our long-term memories to our working memories.  This is key.  The more times we retrieve the information, the better.

Book Small Teaching by James Lang

To encourage your students to practice retrieval, try these strategies from James Lang’s book Small Teaching:

The Retrieval Syllabus.  Most of us distribute our syllabi on the first day of class and never bring it up again, until a student violates a policy or makes a complaint.  Instead of thinking of your syllabus as a contract, envision it as a resource that is continuously referred to throughout the semester.  Fill out the course schedule with details that will help students see how the course will progress, how topics connect to one another, and how knowledge is organized in your discipline.  Then, during class, ask students to look at the document to orient themselves as well as remind them of what has been discussed thus far.

Warm-up Review.  In the first few minutes of class, ask students to write down on a scrap sheet of paper the topics that were covered the class period before or the main themes from the reading.  Ask students to share their “take aways”: What do they think was the most important point?  What struck them?  What piqued their interest?

I’ve done something similar with my students, but I simply asked the class to provide a review orally.  Typically, the same few students are the only ones who reply.  Thus, not everyone is encouraged to practice retrieval, so this method is less effective than asking all students to write down their recap.  This simple exercise has the added benefit of an intellectual “warm-up” — prepping students for learning and participating during class.

Exit Tickets.  Similarly, at the end of class, have students to complete an exit ticket.  For example, you could ask students to write down two things they learned and one question they still have.  This requires retrieval as well as provides valuable information about what students identify as important and what they are struggling with.  This can serve as a great jumping off point for the next class period.

What is absolutely essential for both warm-ups and exit tickets is that students are told not to consult their notes or textbook when responding.  If students look up the answers, they are not practicing retrieval.  It’s also important to explain to students the purpose of these exercises.  You’re not trying to test them or give them busy-work; you’re trying to help them learn more effectively.

Frequent Quizzing.  Frequent, low-stakes quizzes are one of the best ways for students to strengthen their retrieval muscles.  Remember that the more we recall information, the stronger the neural pathways between long-term and working memory.  When creating quizzes, it’s essential that they are not weighted heavily.  The point is to encourage retrieval, not stress students out.  It’s also important to include question types that will be similar to what students can expect on exams.  This allows students to familiarize themselves with those formats so the exam is a test of knowledge instead of exam-taking ability.

If you don’t have enough class time to devote to frequent quizzes, consider using online quizzes, such as through your Learning Management System (LMS).  Most textbook publishers provide gigantic test banks that provide more than enough questions to create multiple quizzes throughout the semester. These banks are designed to be quickly imported into your LMS and quizzes can be automatically-graded, making quiz creation and administration simple.  To ensure students are practicing retrieval, restrict the time limit so they don’t have the leeway to look up every answer in their notes or book (30-60 seconds per multiple choice question is advisable).

Space Out Due Dates.  Students should complete multiple smaller assessments throughout the semester (as opposed to only one midterm and one final exam).  Intersperse lower stakes assessments (e.g. weekly quizzes, practice problems, minute papers) with higher stakes assessments (e.g. exams, research papers, lab reports).  According to James Lang, “the more frequently that your students have to check in and offer some demonstration of their learning, the more often you are giving them retrieval practice” (2016, p. 36).

Providing frequent opportunities for retrieval will not only help your students remember important information, it will also open the door to higher levels of cognition.  I’ve shared simple but powerful ways to help your students learn that do not require extra preparation, overwhelming amounts of grading, or even that much class time.  Want more ideas?  Check out James Lang’s fantastic book Small Teaching and then ask yourself, “what small changes can I make to help my students learn?”

Best Practices, discussion, TLT

Tips For More Effective Online Discussions

There are many ways in which faculty can extend the classroom conversation online; OAKS Discussion board, VoiceThread, and blogs to name a few.  However, there is an art to getting students to actually think critically and discuss thoughtfully in an online environment.   The document below outlines a few tips to help you get more out of your students in an online discussion.

Download a printable PDF

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Strategies for Effective Team Projects
Best Practices, Collaboration, Teaching Advice

Strategies for Drama-Free Team Projects

Effective collaboration is a foundational skill that is taught as early as kindergarten.  By the time students reach college, one would think they would be expert team players.  Unfortunately, any professor can tell you that’s not usually true.  Students struggle to communicate competently, schedule meeting times, and manage conflict.  This often leads to tearful office hour appointments or angry emails about slackers and alliances. So the following is advice based upon my experiences and research I’ve conducted regarding effective group work strategies for the college classroom.

Strategies for Effective Team Projects
Image credit: endlessorigami.com

Determine what type of group work will allow students to achieve the learning outcomes.  Group work is not one size fits all.  There are many forms of collaborative learning and each serves its own purpose.  So first think about what you want students to accomplish from working together, then decide upon a method (such as team-based learning, peer instruction, or project-based learning)

Instructors, not students, should form groups.  When students are allowed to choose their own teammates, they almost always (1) choose their friends and acquaintances or (2) choose people who sit near them.  I don’t blame them; that’s the easy and comfortable option.  But this often results in homogenous groups.  Thus, especially for higher-stakes projects, instructors should strategically form teams that are composed of members who are diverse and who share common blocks of time to meet outside of class.  This can be accomplished by administering surveys that address variables such as personality type, learning style, conflict management style, course-related knowledge and experience, habits, and schedules.

Discuss principles of effective teamwork.  While students have been collaborating with peers for most of their educational careers, many don’t have a scholarly understanding of group dynamics.  I’ve found spending a class period sharing the research on assigning group roles, establishing expectations, and managing conflict has improved my students’ success.  If you don’t have class time to devote to such a discussion, provide your students with resources, such as handouts or links to websites that they can refer to as they work.

Require a team contract.  For higher-stakes assignments, such as semester-long projects, have students write a contract that details expectations and consequences of violating those norms.  During the team’s first meeting, I suggest students brainstorm all the things they hate about group projects then turn those complaints into a list of do’s and don’ts.  I ask students to provide me with a copy of their contract that each team member has signed.  This document can then be used by the group to mediate conflicts.

Establish a policy to deal with social loafing.  I work hard to maintain a “no drama” environment in my classes.  So I have a policy that outlines procedures and consequences for students who violate their team contracts.  This policy has shown students that I will not (and they should not) tolerate slacking off.  Whatever type of policy you create, make sure you require students to provide documentation of the contract violations and to meet with you separately.  This helps to prevent unwarranted complaints or students “ganging up” on a teammate.

Strategies for Effective Team Projects

Require teams to provide you with regular progress reports.  To identify problems early and to ensure students are not procrastinating, I require teams to update me biweekly.  I ask students to identify a member of the team who is responsible for providing me with those updates either face-to-face or via email.  This has helped immensely to address concerns and to steer students in the right direction when they’re faltering.

Ask teams to complete regular assessments of one another.  An interesting meta-analysis published in Teaching of Psychology concluded that peer assessments within groups do not improve learning outcomes.  I hypothesize that the typical way peer evaluations are completed is to blame.  Often, instructors will require students to complete a cumulative assessment of their teammates at the end of the project.  Perhaps they’re asked to distribute points or assign each team member a grade.  But by the time a project is completed, students may have “checked out” and are less motivated to provide a thoughtful assessment (“the project is done; I don’t really care anymore.”).  Also, this type of evaluation doesn’t allow the team to examine their dynamic while they’re collaborating and, therefore, eliminates the opportunity to make improvements.  A potentially better approach is to first instruct students on the principles and importance of constructive feedback then ask them to complete periodic assessments as they work together. Perhaps at the termination of the project, students could write a letter to you reflecting on the evolution of the group.

Encourage students to use technology. One of the biggest complaints students have about group projects is finding time outside of class to meet.  Many students have jobs, internships, and other extracurriculars that make matching schedules frustrating if not impossible.  There are a multitude of technology tools that allow students to collaborate when not in the same physical space.  Google Drive allows students to work together on documents, slides, and spreadsheets on any device that connects to the Internet.  Google Hangouts, Blab, and Skype allow students to videoconference.  And there are many collaborative whiteboard apps, such as Realtime Board.  The availability of free software and apps really limits how often students can claim “we can’t get together.”

I hope these suggestions help you to help your students get the most out of collaborative learning.  If you have other tips for effective group work, please share!

 

References and Resources:

Faculty Focus Special Report: Effective group work strategies for the college classroom: http://www.cincinnatistate.edu/online/faculty-resources/Effective%20Group%20Work%20Strategies%20for%20College%20Classroom.pdf

Major, C. H. (2015, Sept. 21). Choosing the best approach for small group work. Faculty Focushttp://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/effective-teaching-strategies/choosing-the-best-approach-for-small-group-work/

Oakley, B., Felder, R. M., Brent, R., & Elhajj, I. (2004). Turning student groups into effective teams. Journal of Student Centered Learning, 2 (1), 9-34.

Tomcho, T. J., & Foeis, R. (2012). Meta-analysis of group learning activities: Empirically based teaching recommendations. Teaching of Psychology, 39 (3), 159-169.

Weimer, M. (2012, Feb. 22). My students don’t like group work. Faculty Focus. http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/teaching-professor-blog/my-students-dont-like-group-work/