As the collaboration continued, Mary realized that she had created a unique opportunity where the entire class was helping each other learn. With more than 30 students actively collaborating on the document, she was certain that the whole class would be successful on the exam. That’s where Mary’s internal alarm went off and that’s why she came to see me.

Mary is an education major and was a student in one of my classes last year. From our work together, I know she’s going to be a great teacher one day. Mary was concerned about the collaborative study guide and wondered whether it could be misinterpreted as cheating. Education majors are held to a high ethical standard at our institution and disposition concerns can lead to someone being removed the program. If everyone got A’s on the exam, would the professor think that somehow the class had cheated? As the person who started the collaborative document, would she somehow be to “blame” for the class’s success?

I tried to calm Mary’s fears. I explained that I was proud of her since she was implementing the concepts we had discussed in our class. In our Instructional Technology class, we had talked about 21st century skills like collaboration and communication and Mary was actually applying the concepts to help her peers learn and succeed. I really didn’t believe that her actions would lead to disciplinary actions but I offered to speak to the professor to alleviate any concerns. Mary left my office relieved and encouraged.

Despite her reassured departure, Mary’s situation has been on my mind for the last few days. As educators, I believe we’re motivated to help all of our students learn. We want to provide them with the tools to help them succeed and hope that they’ll meet the high standards we set for them. As a student, Mary had created a collaborative learning environment for her peers but worried that if everyone was successful that the success could be misinterpreted or worse, devalued. In a somewhat ironic twist, success for everyone was undermining the very concept of success. It’s almost as if for success to be real, authentic or earned, there had to be some unsuccessful students as well. I know Mary didn’t really think this way but her internal alarm went off nonetheless. As educators, we need to move past the concept of education as competition. Learning shouldn’t be a race with winners and losers. Learning is about personal growth and meeting high expectations. As educators, we should be embracing student-led collaborative efforts that lead to class-wide success and looking for ways to foster it ourselves.

Here are a few ways you can help to stoke the fires of collaboration in your class:

• Make your expectations clear. You don’t need to necessarily provide a grading rubric for your assignments, but you do need to make sure students know what you expect. While students always want to know page length and formatting criteria for papers, I choose to provide leading questions to help students assess their own work and the work of their classmates. By knowing the expectations, students can better help one another work toward meeting my learning goals.
• Introduce students to Google Drive (the new home of Google Docs) or some other collaborative writing tool. With their chaotic schedules, students can’t always meet in traditional study groups like they once did. By introducing an online space that they can use, you help to endorse their collaboration.
• Avoid grading on a curve. While this may sound counter-intuitive, grading on a curve can undermine student collaboration. Students who don’t want to see a classmate “ruin the curve” won’t be motivated to collaborate with them and help them succeed.

If students work together and an entire class meets our standards, we should celebrate it. We need to promote a culture in our classrooms and on our campuses where success isn’t defined or guided by failure but attributed to success in itself. That’s a huge undertaking but I think it’s more aligned to the promise of education, especially in the 21st century.

Dr. Oliver Dreon is the director of the Center for Academic Excellence at Millersville University.

1. It’s hard to focus during small group exercises.
2. We are always rushed.
3. Group exercises mean we do the work and the teacher doesn’t.
4. We’re trying to work on material we didn’t understand in the reading.
5. If we want to work in groups, we can form them on our own; in class we would rather hear someone who understands the material explain it.
6. We’re all confused; getting in a group merely compounds the confusion.
7. I don’t like the people in my group.
8. Group members don’t show up or don’t contribute.
9. We’d get through more material if you lectured.
10. I can’t sleep during small group exercises.

A few of these reasons have convinced some faculty that not much learning occurs in groups. Others may be a bit more ambivalent but figure if students are opposed why bother with a questionable strategy and have their resistance to deal with as well.

Taylor responds as do many of us who use group work regularly. “Some of these reasons are exactly why I use small group work in class.” (p. 219) Group work engages students and forces them to work with the material. Of course, it’s easier, and from the student perspective preferable, if the teacher provides all the examples, raises all the questions, proposes and evaluates various solutions, i.e., does all the work. All students have to do is copy or download the teacher’s material.

It’s also true that working in groups is harder than doing it on your own. Groups have to cooperate, communicate, delegate and depend on each other. But for most tasks, groups can do more and do it better than individuals. In the professional world, there’s hardly a career where some (if not most) of the work is done in groups and not necessarily groups populated with your friends.

To students and some teachers, lecture looks like a “neater” way to learn. It certainly is more efficient, but the question is what kind of learning results from lecture? Too often lecture material is memorized—it hasn’t really been figured out, often it can’t be applied and regularly it’s quickly forgotten. Learning most things is a messy process. Confusion, frustration, even despair regularly occur. If students never experience those feelings, they also never experience the thrill of finally figuring something out, of really understanding and of being changed by what they’ve learned.

Does this mean group work should replace lectures? That teacher explanations are always ruled out? Of course not. It simply means that teachers need a repertoire of instructional strategies and that the decision of which to use when should be guided by a collection of variables that does not include whether students want to work in groups.

Taylor says she uses groups over student objections because they work. “By the end of the semester, there are improvements in their performance, teamwork and ability to solve problems. And this is what education is about: students’ growth and learning. Our role as educators is not as a performer or entertainer, but as a facilitator who guides students through the challenges of the learning process, whether they like it or not.” (p. 219)

What may be most useful here is her head-on strategy for dealing with student objections. If you ask students why they don’t want to work in groups and assemble their list, you can respond to their objections. Students may not like all your answers but at least the conversation introduces them to the educational rationale behind having them work collectively and it isn’t because you’re making them do the work you don’t want to do.

Reference: Taylor, A. (2011). Top 10 reasons students dislike working in groups … and why I do it anyway. Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Education, 39 (2), 219-220.

In 2007 Twitter users, as a whole, made about 5,000 tweets a day. By 2008 the number had increased to 300,000 per day, before growing to 2.5 million per day in January 2009. Just one year later, in January 2010, the figure jumped to 50 million tweets per day.

I think that is what people mean by the phrase “hockey stick growth.”

Despite its rapid growth, however, Twitter can be a bit puzzling to someone on the outside looking in. With its quirky lingo, written (and unwritten) rules, and very real potential for being a classroom distraction, some instructors feel Twitter is a can of worms that’s better left unopened. And yet, as an educator, you can’t help but be curious to see what all the fuss is about, not to mention the desire to add something new to your student engagement toolbox.

In an effort to demystify the Twitter universe for faculty considering leveraging the power of the micro-blogging platform in the classroom, Kerry Ramsay, a professor at Loyalist College, presented a seminar on Using Twitter to Enhance Collaborative Learning.

After covering the basic terminology, Ramsay, who has applied social media in a variety of contexts to help create a collaborative learning environment for her post-graduate students, explained why Twitter makes sense in the college classroom, including how it can be used for research, networking, and to maximize classroom connections.

One of the most common uses for Twitter in the classroom is as a discussion tool, particularly in large classes where it’s often hard to get students to participate. Ramsay notes that Twitter won’t replace classroom discussions, but rather enhance them by establishing a safe format for both introverted and extroverted students to share their opinions. For example, an instructor could ask students to summarize key points of a recent reading, and use the tweets as a starting point for discussion.

In some cases, instructors may chose to have students tweet comments or questions during a lecture. Known as backchanneling, this requires a willingness on the part of the instructor to give up some control to the students who now have an easy way to share their opinions as well as offer links to supporting information in real time. In order to maximize the power of the backchannel, Ramsay recommends having a TA monitor the live Twitter stream, and respond in a timely manner. You also will need to create a hashtag for the class to use.

Despite the many benefits of using Twitter to enhance student engagement and collaboration, there are challenges as well, including:

• Keeping students focused on the topic
• Learning how to write clear, concise tweets within the 140-character limit
• Ensuring comments remain constructive and professional

“Learning how to use Twitter can be a humbling experience, and it takes a little time to get comfortable with it, but don’t give up,” Ramsay says. “Ask a colleague for help, practice with your friends and family, and before you know it you’ll have the confidence to use it in the classroom.”

To see a YouTube video on how one professor uses Twitter in the classroom, go here »

What is educationally valuable talk?
With its emphasis on high-level negotiation of meaning, educationally valuable talk (EVT) is a form of representation in text-based communication whereby students “collaboratively display constructive, and at times, critical engagement with the ideas or key concepts that make up the topic of an online discussion, and build knowledge through reasoning, articulation, creativity, and reflection” (Uzuner, 2007, p. 402).

Discourse that is representative of EVT is the hallmark of successful online classrooms as it facilitates higher-order learning. However, in online classes where there are minimum posting requirements, students’ tendency to meet the required amount in an obligatory fashion usually leads to interactions that do not have potential educational value as they do not contribute to the learning community’s pool of knowledge. Uzuner (2007) characterizes such conversations as educationally less valuable talk (ELVT)—talk that “lacks substance in regards to critical and meaningful engagement with the formal content or ideas that are discussed in the posts of others in an online discussion” (p. 404).

There can be little doubt that ELVT does occur to at least some degree in almost all online classes. The prevalence of this type of talk becomes the most troubling issue, in fact a nightmare, to the online instructors. The question then arises: How can instructors ensure educationally valuable talk in their online classes?

Suggestions for instructors
Based on the findings of a study that investigated the factors that had value in increasing the quality of student interactions in an online graduate education course, Uzuner and Mehta (2007) propose the following strategies for instructors to help them achieve educationally valuable talk (EVT) in their online classes:

1. Generation of class norms by the students: One of the factors that may facilitate the production of EVT in online discussions is having students co-construct a set of guidelines/norms for online discussions which will then be presented to them in all modules as a reminder of class expectations. Having ownership of the norms that govern the course discussions will certainly affect the climate of collaborative learning in an online class by providing an impetus for students to post more constructive and meaningful messages.
2. The employment of Grice’s maxims for self-evaluation: In addition to the student-generated class norms, another factor that may positively affect the nature and characteristics of students’ online posts is the employment of Grice’s maxims by the students to self-evaluate their own posts. Although not specifically referring to online conversations, Grice’s maxims for effective and collaborative conversations include:
   • Quantity: make your contribution as informative as is required, but not more, or less, than is required.
   • Quality: do not say that which you believe to be false or for which you lack evidence.
   • Relation: be relevant.
   • Manner: avoid ambiguity and obscurity; be clear, brief, and orderly.
3. Retrospective analysis of posted responses: Asking students to engage in a retrospective analysis a few times during the semester whereby they self-critique and reflect on their performance and comment on their perceptions concerning the quality of their responses may make them revisit their learning and, more important, initiate them into rethinking about their postings to improve their talk quality. In these retrospective analyses, students can be asked to talk about the ways online discussions mediated their learning and reflect upon the quality of their postings, usefulness of their contribution to the overall discussion, and their experience as a collaborator in making meaning of the content.

References
Uzuner, S. (2007). Educationally valuable talk: A new concept for determining the quality of online conversations. Journal of Online Learning and Teaching, 3(4), 400–410.

Uzuner, S. & Mehta, R. (2007, August). Aiming for educationally valuable talk in online discussions. Paper presented at the Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching—MERLOT Seventh International Conference, Sheraton New Orleans Hotel, New Orleans, Louisiana.

Excerpted from Suggestions for Instructors: 3 Ways to Ensure Educationally Valuable Talk in Online Discussions, Online Classroom, July 2008.

Designing an Effective Collaborative Wiki Project

Creating collaborative projects for students has always been a challenge. But with today’s busy students it’s difficult just finding a time outside of class when they can all meet. It’s true of traditional students, and even more so for online learners who often are not only balancing more responsibilities, but are geographically dispersed as well.

How do you get students involved in collaborative projects when their schedules make face-to-face collaboration virtually impossible? The good news is there’s a technology-based solution – a simple, effective one that provides an excellent environment for collaboration. It’s easy to learn, is user-friendly, and it meets the needs of students and instructors. Plus, it’s free!

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You can learn all about this powerful solution with a copy of the seminar Designing an Effective Collaborative Wiki Project.

During this presentation, Rhonda Ficek, Ph.D., Director of Instructional Technology Services at Minnesota State University Moorhead, shows you how wikis offer an ideal environment for student collaboration. You will learn:

• Elements of a successful instructional wiki project.
• Recommended wiki project types for the classroom.
• How wikis streamline and support the collaborative process.
• How to create the all-important opening page.
• Best practices for page structure.
• How wikis help develop student organizational skills for digital and other assets.
• How to monitor and troubleshoot wiki projects.
• And much more.

You’ll also get to work through a carefully prepared, web-based lesson on WetPaint, the free wiki application that’s wonderfully adaptable to the needs of a higher-ed classroom.

This seminar was developed for:

• Traditional and Online Faculty
• Instructional Technologists
• Instructional Designers
• Instructional Media specialists

Collaborative learning is an important opportunity for students.

This seminar shows you how technology can help make it a positive learning experience!

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Don’t look now but it won’t be long before Millennial faculty arrive on your campus as well. For four-year institutions, the first wave of Millennial faculty should arrive by 2013. For community colleges, where many faculty often are not required to have doctorates, the wave will arrive even sooner.

Are you ready? Probably not, according to John O’Brien, vice president of academic affairs at Century College in Minnesota. In an interview with Academic Leader O’Brien said it’s important to consider these future faculty before they arrive because the planning that needs to occur to handle the changes associated with this new generation will take years, and will have implications with regards to technology use, faculty recruitment and development, and collaborative work and decision making.

Expectations of Millennial Faculty
One of the most obvious difference between Millennials and previous generations is in the area of technology. There have always been some faculty members who enthusiastically adopted new technologies, but for many new technologies have been something to deal with rather than to embrace. As Millennials enter the academic workplace, the conversation will likely shift from faculty coping with new technologies to faculty pushing the envelope and advocating for ability to incorporating emerging instructional technologies in their teaching, O’Brien says.

Although technology is a key difference, it may not be the most important. “Technology is easy to point to, but most of the research on Millennials talks about things like collaborative learning and collaborative work environments, and I think a lot of these new faculty will be interested in things like learning communities, team teaching, and service learning,” O’Brien says.

Demonstrating this commitment to collaboration will be an important factor in recruiting faculty. Interestingly, O’Brien did an informal analysis of advertisements for faculty positions listed in the Chronicle of Higher Education and has found that few institutions tout collaboration in their ads.

In addition, Millennial faculty likely expect more clearly defined faculty roles and policies than currently exist at many institutions. “These faculty are going to expect to have clearly defined roles and responsibilities, and they want to know what the rules are, and then they’ll follow them. But if you’re a campus that doesn’t have intellectual property policies but expects faculty to generate a number of online courses, then there may be a disconnect there,” O’Brien says.

Preparing for the next generation of faculty needs to be an institution-wide effort, and each perspective is essential. The deans, who are doing the hiring, will need to find ways to communicate with faculty candidates that the institution has the characteristics they’re looking for, and department chairs will be directly involved in creating collaborative environments within the departments.

The administration needs to facilitate a strategic planning process that ensures Millennial faculty’s unique needs are considered. “Changing a campus culture is a three-to-five-year process, and the best way to start is within the context of strategic planning. Instead of starting with the question ‘What are our goals?’ perhaps this conversation should start with, ‘What kind of environment do we want to have for our students and faculty?’” O’Brien says. “And what kind of campus culture is needed to attract and keep excellent new faculty?”

With excerpts from Now is the Time to Prepare for Millennial Faculty, Academic Leader, Feb. 2007.

To prevent this inequity, Engle makes participation in group work mandatory and uses peer evaluation to encourage equal participation. Grades consist of two elements: the group grade of the product itself and a grade for participation (based on peer review).

Engle provides a rubric for peer evaluation. Failure to participate in group projects is an automatic one-course grade deduction. “I do that primarily because really bad group experiences and failure to participate in the online environment just decimate the sense of community we’ve worked so hard to develop up to that point,” she says.

Preliminary collaborative learning projects in Engle’s courses tend to be relatively easy and fun, in order to emphasize group processes. “Before you actually launch a project, it’s important to make sure early on that everybody knows who’s doing what and that they have contingency plans,” she says. “And if they have nonparticipating members, I give groups the ability to fire a member, so that they are not continually spending all of their energy trying to chase someone who is not going to participate anyhow.”

She offers suggestions on using threaded discussions and chat and asks students to address the following organizational issues:

• How are you going to divide the project so that each team member has a part?
• Who is going to be responsible for each part?
• How are you going to communicate during the project?
• How will members submit their work to the group?
• What is the deadline for the submissions of individual pieces?
• Who is going to be responsible for putting the pieces together into one paper?
• How are you going to handle final proofing?
• What will you do if somebody does not do his or her part or does not meet deadlines?
• How are you going to go about answering questions that group members might have about the project?

An important consideration in incorporating group work into an online course is making sure that it suits the goals of the course and that it makes “authentic use of the content that’s being presented,” Engle says. “If you use group work simply for the sake of incorporating group work, you’re probably not going to create an engaging exercise.”

Excerpted from How to Promote Collaborative Active Online Learning, Online Classroom, Nov. 2006.

1.) Explain how to get set up. Although many students may have used IM, they probably have not used it for academic purposes. The syllabus should explain how to set up students’ IM accounts. Have students use a multiprotocol instant messaging application such as Trillian or Gaim to make communication across different IM systems easier. Remind students to add each other to their buddy lists.

2.) Offer group chats at different days and times. IM can be used for group chats. In order to keep chats manageable, limit them to eight students per session and offer them at different days and times, so students can find a session that is convenient for them.

4.) Form study groups. Group chats are an excellent way for students to make connections with each other. Encourage them to continue their chats in groups or one on one.

5.) IM your students. Isolation is one of the dangers of online learning. Simple, synchronous messages from the instructor can open up communication and encourage students.

6.) Invite students to IM you. Because you are on their buddy lists, students will be able to tell when you are online (as long as you have your IM application open). This open line of synchronous communication can be an excellent way of holding online office hours.

7.) Establish realistic expectations. Increased access to the instructor can foster unrealistic expectations. For example, just because students are able to communicate with you synchronously does not mean that they will get their graded assignments back any sooner. Explain your communication policies clearly in your syllabus.

8.) Don’t micromanage. Like the private conversations that take place among students before and after face-to-face classes, IM can be an informal form of communication that can help students learn and provide social connections that might not otherwise be available in the course.

9.) Keep a chat log. Not everyone can be available for synchronous discussions, but they can still benefit from transcripts of the communication that occurs in these sessions.

Do you have a tip for using IM to keep you students engaged? Please share it with Faculty Focus readers by using the Add Comment feature.

Excerpted from Tips from the Pros: Nine Strategies for Using IM in Your Online Course. Online Classroom, vol. 7, no. 2.

Using Collaborative Teams In and Out of Class

Research tells us that learners benefit when they collaborate in teams. This teamwork helps develop learners’ critical thinking skills, increases their persistence, and improves their understanding of diversity.

Yet students consistently rate collaborative teamwork negatively. Students accustomed to being given the “right answers” in lectures are often impatient with the collaborative process. To make matters worse, many instructors do not offer adequate guidance on how to work together productively.

This seminar examines barriers that prevent the successful use of collaborative teams in and out of the classroom and suggest methods for avoiding these pitfalls.

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Knowledge benefits for you:

• Avoid the pitfalls of collaborative teams
• Encourage all team members to take responsibility for teamwork
• Incorporate self-reflection and assessment into the teaming process
• Use different methods to put your teams together
• Address learning differences among students
• Handle students who slack off
• Use teams in large classrooms

Who can benefit from this seminar:

• Faculty, especially those who are interested in introducing collaborative teaming into a course
• Faculty development personnel
• Department chairs
• Academic deans
• Vice presidents for academic affairs
• Graduate-level teaching assistants

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