For Faculty Members Developing or Retooling a 300-level Pedagogy Course: Collaborative Learning

Amy Lesen, Campuside Consultant
GSI Teaching and Resource Center [pdf version available]

I. Definitions

“‘Collaborative learning’ is an umbrella term for a variety of educational approaches involving joint intellectual effort by students, or students and teachers together.” A. Goodsell, M. Mather and V. Tinto. Collaborative Learning: A Sourcebook for Higher Education, 1992.
“Active learning” can include group work, but doesn’t necessarily have to. Some attempts at definitions: “[Active learning] stands in contrast to traditional learning styles where teachers do most of the work and students remain passive.” Or: “derives from two basic assumptions: 1) that learning is by nature an active endeavor and 2) that different people learn in different ways.” (Both quotes are from Promoting Active Learning by Meyers and Jones, 1993).
Group work: This is a general term for learning activities done together by two or more people and which usually involve discussion or problem-solving.
“‘Cooperative learning’ is a relationship in a group of students that requires positive interdependence (a sense of sink or swim together), individual accountability (each of us has to contribute and learn), interpersonal skills (communication, trust, leadership, decision making, and conflict resolution), face-to-face promotive interaction, and processing (reflecting on how well the team is functioning and how to function even better).” (From the Coop Learning Center of U Minnesota Web site: http://www.co-operation.org/index.html). This term often implies a structure put in place in the classroom and followed throughout the semester or year (but not necessarily).

II. Components of active learning: not an all-inclusive list

– see handout from Promoting Active Learning: Strategies for the College Classroom by Meyers and Jones, 1993.

Talking and listening: For example: discussion, verbal and face-to-face interactions between students and between students and teachers. This encompasses a wide array of group work activities that involve discussion.
Writing: For example: giving students the opportunity to give written feedback; free-writes, short written reflections or summaries at the end of a lecture.
Reading: Giving students tools to be interactive readers. For example: preparing study questions; encouraging students to write comments in the margins; writing short summaries of reading; giving structured, group activities for working with reading assignments. An active approach to reading is one where students are given guidance and structure for reading assignments rather than told what pages to read and left on their own.
Reflecting: “Structuring opportunities for pondering and reflection” (Meyers and Jones, 1993). For example: using silence or pauses in the classroom to encourage quiet reflection; student journals; etc.

III. Some strategies and activities for promoting active learning in the classroom

A. Small groups

How do you form small groups or teams?

Randomly: Have students number off; using pieces of a jigsaw puzzle; in a large lecture form small groups by having groups of four sitting next to each other form a group; etc.
Teacher-selected: Teacher selects members of groups based on the teacher’s knowledge of their strengths and weaknesses. Pre-condition for this is that you must know your students fairly well.
Student-selected: Have students form their own teams. Problematic because students often choose only their friends and may spend time socializing instead of learning.

What can you use small groups for?

Generate ideas
Summarize main points
Assess levels of skills and understanding
Reexamine ideas presented before in class
Review problems, for exams, etc.
Process what has been learned at the end of class
Generate comments to teachers on class progress
Compare and contrast knowledge, ideas, theories, etc.
Solve problems
Brainstorm answers, solutions, etc.

Groups can be formal or informal:

Informal: Use one-time groups for a one-time activity in class
Formal: Use same group structure over entire semester or for one, extended group project.
Formal (or even informal) groups may have assigned roles: group facilitator; group recorder; group reporter to the class; timekeeper, etc.

B. Some active learning activities (Most of these involve small groups or pairs.)

Think-pair-share: Instructor poses a question. Students are given time (30 seconds or one minute) to think of a response. Each student then pairs with another student and both discuss their responses to the question. Instructor invites students to share their responses to the class as a whole.
Roundtable: Students in small groups sit in a circle and respond in turn to a question or problem by stating their ideas aloud as they write them on paper. Can go around circle, in turn, more than once if desired. After roundtable, students discuss and summarize the ideas generated, and report back to the class.
Three-step interview: Can be an icebreaker or used as a tool to generate ideas and discussion. Ask each student to find one partner they don’t know well. Make sure everyone has a partner. You can use triads if there is an uneven number of students in the class. Students interview their partner for a structured amount of time using interview questions given by instructor. Often questions are opinion- or experience-generated: How do you use writing in your daily life? Should premed students study holistic medicine? After a set time, students switch roles so that both get a chance to be interviewed. Then, join each pair with another pair to form a group of four. Each partner in a pair introduces the partner to the other pair and summarizes the partner’s responses. Other variations on this activity are possible.
Thinking-aloud paired problem solving: Students in pairs take turns thinking through the solution to a problem posed by teacher. The student that is not the problem solver takes notes, and then the two students switch roles so that each student gets a chance to be both solver and note-taker. Then they can go into larger teams or back to the class as a whole and report back about the solutions and the process.
Think-pair-square: Same as think-pair-share except that instead of reporting back to the entire class, students report back to a team or class group of 4-6.
Structured controversy: Divide class into groups of four. Instructor identifies a controversial topic in the field covered in the course and gathers material that gives information and background to support different views of the controversy. Students work with one partner and each pair within the group of four (i.e., two pairs per group) takes a different side of the issue. Pairs work outside of class or in class to prepare to advocate and defend their position. The groups of four meet, and each pair takes a turn stating and arguing its position while the other pair listens and takes notes without interrupting. Each pair must have a chance both to listen and take notes and to argue their position. Then all four talk together as a group to learn all sides of the issue. Next, each pair must reverse its position and argue the opposite position that one it argued before. Lastly, the group of four as a whole discusses and synthesizes all the positions to come up with a group report. There may be a class presentation where each group presents its findings.

C. Working with writing and reading:

Peer editing: Ask students to hand in a first draft of a writing assignment. Photocopy each paper and identify it with a number instead of the student’s name. Give each student in the class an anonymous paper to edit. It is helpful to give the students oral and written guidelines for editing criteria. After the students edit a paper, each student receives the anonymous feedback from his or her unknown peer editor. It is often useful to have a class discussion about how this process worked for everyone.
Paired annotations: Teacher identifies a number of significant articles on a topic, or the students can do this as well. Each student individually outside of class writes a reflective commentary on one article. In class, students are randomly paired up with another student who has written a commentary on the same article. The two partners read each other’s commentaries, comparing key points to their own commentary. Then the two students team-write a commentary based on a synthesis of both their papers.
Reciprocal peer questioning: Instructor assigns outside class reading on a topic. Instructor asks students to generate a list of two or three thought-provoking questions of their own on the reading. Students bring these lists of self-generated questions to class. Students do not need to be able to answer the questions they generate. Students then break into teams of 3-4. Each student poses her questions to the team and the team discusses the reading using the student-generated questions as a guide. The questions of each student are discussed within the team. The team may then report back to the class on some key questions and answers generated.

D. Structured problem solving:

These activities are usually of longer duration and use teams that stay together for the duration of a semester or project. See Chapter 6 from Millis and Cottell, 1998, available in the GSI Teaching & Resource Center.

Most of the information above is derived from:

Meyers, Chet and Thomas B. Jones. Promoting Active Learning: Strategies for the College Classroom. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1993.

Millis, Barbara J. and Philip G. Cottell, Jr. Cooperative Learning for Higher Education Faculty. Phoenix: American Council on Education/Oryx Press, 1998.

IV. Misconceptions about cooperative learning:

(Excerpted from the Web site of the Cooperative Learning Center at the University of Minnesota: http://www.co-operation.org/index.html.)

"Students only learn as much as the average of their group." Untrue: Cooperative Learning groups tend to learn more than the brightest member of the group would do alone.
"I'm already doing it: I put students into groups to learn." Big difference between just putting students into groups and structuring those groups to care about each others' learning and working cooperatively.
"Students learn the cooperative skills at home." Almost always when you are structuring cooperative learning groups, you will need to teach cooperative skills as well.
"A group grade isn't fair." As one group of students told us, it is the only fair way to grade a group effort. The evaluator can't measure the many different ways they contributed to the group effort. Most students feel group grading is unfair until they experience cooperative work. (However, when the assignment being graded is actually written individually, it is better to get individual grades, because the group is supposed to take responsibility to prepare each group member to do well, individually. This is known in the jargon as “group to individual transfer.”)
"You have to assign roles." Not true. Letting roles develop is appropriate at times and short tasks don't need to have time taken to assign and teach different roles. The major reason for roles is to make sure a missing behavior is present in the group; settle an argument over who has to do the recording; or "level the playing field" in a group with unequal status by distributing key responsibilities.

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