Posts Tagged ‘student collaboration’
February 8 - Group Work: A Bill of Rights and Responsibilities for All Members
By: Maryellen Weimer, PhD in Teaching Professor Blog
I recently revisited something I have always considered a great resource. It originally appeared in a 1992 issue of The Teaching Professor and was published then as a Study Group Member’s Bill of Rights. It outlined what individuals had the right to expect when they participated in study groups. Students not only have rights, they also have responsibilities. Those rights and responsibilities are relevant in any group activity used to accomplish educational goals. The version below attempts to capture those larger expectations and duties.
September 16 - Fostering Collaboration in the Online Classroom
By: Rob Kelly in Online Education
Glenda Hernandez Baca, professor/coordinator of teacher education at Montgomery College, Takoma Park Campus, encourages the use of collaborative learning throughout online courses. In an interview with Online Classroom, she offered the following ideas for facilitating collaborative learning in group projects and in threaded discussions:
March 14 - Fostering Student Interaction in the Online Classroom
By: Mary Bart in Online Education
When you first start teaching online, there’s the temptation to put on your Superman cape and try be ultra responsive and ever-present. So intent on ensuring that each and every student has a successful learning experience in your class, you answer student emails at any hour of the day or night, respond to every discussion board post, and design elaborate assignments that take advantage of all the latest technology tools available.
February 23 - Group Exams and Quizzes: The Benefits of Student Collaboration
By: Maryellen Weimer, PhD in Teaching Professor Blog
Have you ever used any sort of group testing activity? The approach is not without benefits. Most students find exams enormously stressful and abundant research documents that high levels of test anxiety can compromise performance. Said more bluntly, students can know the information, but be so anxious they can’t summon it for the exam. Letting students work together on test questions reduces that anxiety considerably. It could be a case of “misery loves company” or the “two heads are better than one” scenario.
August 31 - To Improve Students’ Problem Solving Skills Add Group Work to the Equation
By: Maryellen Weimer, PhD in Teaching and Learning
Problem solving is “what you do when you don’t know what to do.”
What a simple, straightforward definition for something often defined in much more complex ways. But problem solving doesn’t always mean the same thing. It might be the solution to a specific problem, like those that appear on math quizzes, or it might be a collection of possibilities that respond to a complex open-ended problem. But however it’s defined, problem solving is one of those skills all teachers aspire to have their students develop.
July 1 - Group Work: Should Your Top Students Work Together?
By: Maryellen Weimer, PhD in Instructional Design
One of the common objections to group work is that bright, capable students are held back when they share group activities and grades with students of lesser ability. This is of concern to teachers and students. Often very good students strongly oppose group work. They worry that an ineffective group with weak or nonproductive members will compromise their grades. Many openly express the belief that they can do the activity, project, paper, or presentation better on their own and would prefer doing it that way.
June 30 - Online Group Work: Making It Meaningful and Manageable
By: Mary Bart in Online Seminars
Group assignments are slowly finding their way into online courses and bringing with them incredible opportunities and big challenges. Integrating group work in the online classroom requires tailored content, a well-defined structure, and a change in student perception. This seminar will guide you through the entire process.
June 4 - Creating a Mindset for Collaboration
By: Roxanne Cullen in Teaching and Learning
Because we know that active engagement in collaborative projects can create a synergy among students that often surpasses what can be learned individually, we find ourselves designing assignments that create opportunities for students to collaborate and learn from one another. Also, the ability to work together in teams is a skill needed in today’s workforce. So for many reasons, assignments that foster collaboration have become essential parts of a well-designed course.
June 1 - Group Work Recommendations
By: Maryellen Weimer, PhD in Effective Teaching Strategies, Teaching Professor Blog
At the recent Teaching Professor Conference, several participants talked with me about a couple of recent blog posts on group work and their concerns about how students function in groups when they work on major projects. The concerns that many faculty have about group dynamics can be solved by carefully designing the group activity. I thought it might be useful to revisit the findings of a really excellent study of students’ experiences in groups. The faculty researchers asked MBA students to answer a series of questions about their best and worst group experiences. Based on the results, the researchers offer these recommendations.
December 14 - How Wikis Streamline Student Collaboration Projects
By: Mary Bart in Asynchronous Learning and Trends
Utter the words “group project” and you’re likely to hear at least a few groans from your students. The reasons for their dislike of group work are many, but logistical difficulties of getting everyone together and lazy group members who don’t pull their own weight are two of the biggest complaints.
