group work

When we ask students to work in groups or turn to their neighbor to discuss course content, many of us wonder whether this kind of collaboration is worthwhile. Students aren’t experts, so could they be teaching each other incorrect information? Or perhaps what they discuss is superficial or watered down? Not to mention the drama and interpersonal conflict that can arise when students try to work together. Is peer teaching really worth it?

Despite these concerns, and many others, a significant amount of empirical research indicates that there are numerous benefits of peer teaching. For example, a recent study published in Teaching in Higher Education, found that working with peers has a positive influence on students’ psychological wellbeing, including autonomy, environmental mastery, and personal growth. The research of Eric Mazur, who popularized peer instruction in the sciences, demonstrates learning gains frequently double and sometimes triple when peer instruction is integrated into class time.

Beyond the research, we must also recognize that peer teaching happens informally all around us. Maryellen Weimer argues that students instinctually learn from one another. When they have a question about course content, they often turn to their peers before their instructor. Students are often intimidated by professors and don’t want to appear “stupid,” so they approach their classmates first. I can’t tell you how many times I overhear students in the hallways turn to a classmate and say “I have no idea what Dr. so-and-so wants for this assignment. Do you?” Students are constantly learning from one another, so why not use our classes to cultivate stronger collaboration and communication skills?

Here are a few simple peer teaching strategies to try:

Microteaching: Students choose or are assigned class periods during which they are responsible for teaching the entire class. They act as the professor for the day and are charged with developing a lecture, crafting activities, and facilitating discussion.

Think-Pair-Share: The professor poses a complex, challenging, or controversial question and asks students to think about their responses alone. To encourage deeper thinking, students should write down their thoughts. Then, ask the students to turn to a neighbor and compare answers. The students are tasked with reaching a consensus or formulating arguments to support their views. Finally, students report back to the rest of the class.

Peer Instruction using an Audience Response System: Students are assigned a reading or video lecture prior to class and then quizzed on the more difficult or complex topics using an Audience Response System, such as Poll Everywhere, to submit their answers. Students then form small groups, discuss the quiz question, come to a consensus, and re-submit a group answer. Instructors can then instantaneously see where clarification is needed based on incorrect answers provided by both individuals and groups.

Immediate Feedback Assessment Technique: This is the low-tech version of the above strategy. Students are presented with multiple-choice questions that they discuss with group members. Then, using cards that are similar to scratch-off lottery tickets, students choose their answer by removing the foil covering options A, B, C, or D. If their choice reveals a star, they know they’ve answered correctly. If they don’t see a star, they must problem-solve with their classmates and endeavor to determine the correct answer. If you are interested in this technique, TLT can provide IF-AT cards to try with your students.

The Jigsaw Technique: In this strategy, the instructor first divides a topic, problem, or assignment into parts. Next, students are split into “home teams” with one member assigned to each topic. Working individually, each student learns about his or her topic. For example, if the content is divided into parts 1, 2, 3, and 4, group one would contain four students and one student would work on part 1, one student on part 2, and so on. Next, groups are reformed into “expert teams” so that everyone in the group worked on the same topic (e.g. all the ones become a group, all the twos, and so on). These students share their findings and collaborate to discuss, verify, and synthesize all the information gathered. Finally, the home teams reconvene and listen to presentations from each member. These final presentations provide students with a better understanding of their own material, as well as the findings that have emerged from other groups.

These are just a handful of popular peer teaching strategies that do not require a significant amount of labor on the part of the instructor. Consider giving one a try. But remember, it’s important to recognize the benefits of peer teaching do not result from simply putting students together in groups. Group work that promotes learning and other positive outcomes is carefully designed, implemented, and assessed.

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.

Reference: Hanson, J. M., T.L. Trolian, M.B Paulsen, and E.T. Pascarella. 2016. Evaluating the influence of peer learning on psychological well-being. Teaching in Higher Education 21 (2): 191–206.

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

October 4, 2016January 31, 2023 Jessica Smith

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.”

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!

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.

Best Practices, Collaboration, Google, Google Apps, Presentation, Productivity, TLT

6 Reasons You Should Be Using Google Slides Instead Of PowerPoint

September 5, 2016January 31, 2023 Mendi Benigni

We all use PowerPoint to create and deliver lectures and for student presentations. But PPT lacks one major feature…collaboration. Google Slides, part of our Google Apps for Education, is a PowerPoint-like presentation application that has that collaboration piece, making it more useful in an academic environment.

Here are six reasons you should be using Google Slides instead of PowerPoint.

Consistency — Your presentations look and act the same way on all computers. Have you ever created a presentation or lecture on your office computer only to have it look or behave differently on the teacher station in the classroom? With Google Slides, all fonts, images, videos, animations etc. are stored online (in the cloud) so your lectures/presentations will look the same on every computer.
Easy Access — Since both the application and the presentations are saved in Google Drive, it’s easy to access and work on them from any computer or mobile device. Just log into drive.google.com and you have access to all your presentations, documents and spreadsheets.
Backchannel for Questions — Google Slides has a new Audience Q&A feature which allows your students/audience to ask questions during the presentation. When activated a web address is automatically added to to the top of each slide allowing the students to ask their questions or make comments.
Tracking Work in Group Presentations — faculty love group presentations but hate not knowing who did what. Google Slides has a Revision History section (File > See Revision History) that shows all changes made to the presentation along with who made them. This is a great way to hold students accountable for a collaborative project. Because it’s web-based, all students in the group can actively create and edit content within the same presentation at the same time.
Easy Sharing — With one easy trick you can share your lecture presentations so that the students can copy it into their Google Drive and then take notes directly in the presentation Notes area.
- Open your presentation and click the blue SHARE button
- Click GET SHAREABLE LINK and click COPY LINK
- Now paste that link either in OAKS or an email to our students BUT before sending it make one minor change. At the end of the link change the word edit to copy ex. edit?usp=sharing /copy?usp=sharing
Efficient In-class Group Work — Create one blank Google Slides presentation and share it with your class. During the group work each group with create their own slide(s) with their contributions. At the end of class you have only one file you have to look at and all the groups have access to each other’s contributions. This also makes it easy to bring the presentation up in class to discuss the group findings.

Best Practices, Collaboration, Teaching Advice

Strategies for Drama-Free Team Projects

October 9, 2015January 31, 2023 Jessica Smith

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.

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.

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 Focus. http://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/

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