Caitlin Kelly: Thank you so much for coming to our workshop on designing and facilitating effective group projects. My name is Katie Kelly and I'm the Assistant Director for the program for instructional excellence.
Caitlin Kelly: And joining me, are my wonderful co presenters. We have to Quinn Melanie and john as well as our fabulous GA font.
Caitlin Kelly: And we'll all be working together today to show you some really cool tips and techniques for creating and running and moderating a group project that will
Caitlin Kelly: Work well we're mainly going to be focusing on a lot of online stuff, but much of this information is highly applicable to face to face settings when we return to the face to face classroom. So I'm going to pull up my PowerPoint really quickly.
Caitlin Kelly: Alrighty. Can everybody see a PowerPoint presentation.
Caitlin Kelly: Cool.
Caitlin Kelly: Before we jump right into the content. I just want to mention a few standard zoom guidelines, just to make sure the session runs smoothly.
Caitlin Kelly: So first, when you are not speaking please mute your microphone is this helps to reduce any kind of background noise.
Caitlin Kelly: Be aware that if you do have your webcam turned on and your microphone other attendees may be able to see or hear you, as well as what's in your background.
Caitlin Kelly: If you have a child having trouble seeing the screen share, you can try selecting the gallery view on zoom that usually shifts everything around a little bit to make it easier
Caitlin Kelly: If you have a question in the middle of the presentation.
Caitlin Kelly: You can feel free to enter that into the chat and we will get to it as soon as possible. We do have specific portions of the
Caitlin Kelly: Presentation designated for questions. But if something pressing comes up, please just let us know in the chat will try to get to you. And lastly, please silence your phone and email as the other participants may be able to hear the notifications.
Caitlin Kelly: Alright, so first off we have our learning objectives. After completing this workshop learners will be able to identify common problems that may occur with group projects.
Caitlin Kelly: Employee solutions for preventing common problems that may occur with group projects analyze learners to determine and group project structure needs. And finally, select appropriate group project creation.
Caitlin Kelly: And facilitation techniques based on the needs of their unique learner groups. And the reason I like to put
Caitlin Kelly: The details that whatever is
Caitlin Kelly: Applicable to your unique group or appropriate for your field is because we're all from different fields here. So some approaches that work for some fields may not work for others. So, always keep in mind what type of class you're teaching and what works best for you.
Caitlin Kelly: Okay, so before we get any farther into the content. I do want to address what can be a bit of an elephant in the room, and that is negativity surrounding group projects now.
Caitlin Kelly: I certainly won't speak for everybody, but I know I've been in classes where I've been very concerned about a particular group project activity.
Caitlin Kelly: And I've also seen a lot of students have negative reactions to group projects. And I think it's really important, especially now that we're facing the challenge of online learning. Learning to consider why that is. Why do people have such a hard time with the group project endemic
Caitlin Kelly: So in order to address this problem. I want to talk about something that at first is going to seem completely unrelated, but I promise we will all circle back around to the main point.
Caitlin Kelly: And that is internet memes. Now, the definition from Wikipedia is
Caitlin Kelly: That a medium is an idea behavior or style that becomes a fad and spreads by means of imitation from person to person within a culture.
Caitlin Kelly: And often curious symbolic meaning representing a particular phenomenon or theme, etc. So it's something that you know appears
Caitlin Kelly: As a result of a commonly occurring phenomenon and on the internet. That's the essentially the method through which it is transferred from person to person. And we usually see that in the forums of pictures captions
Caitlin Kelly: Now if you go to Google Images and you type in group project name without fail. This is the one that you will see
Caitlin Kelly: Nine out of 10 times and we have that every group project. We have one person who does 99% of the work one person who has no idea what's going on. The entire time.
Caitlin Kelly: One who says he's going to help, but he's not an one that disappears at the very end at the very beginning and doesn't show up again until the very end.
Caitlin Kelly: This is the one I tried this on multiple different browsers, out of curiosity, it popped up every single time.
Caitlin Kelly: Here's another one. I think we've all sort of been there and experienced this awkward kind of situation when there's not very much structure on how to actually organize yourself into groups within a group project.
Caitlin Kelly: And this is one of my favorites group projects and school made me understand why Batman prefers to work alone.
Caitlin Kelly: But the reason this is all connected to the idea of group projects and dealing with that negativity that can arise from introducing a group product in the classroom is because
Caitlin Kelly: Internet memes emerge as a result of a commonly occurring phenomenon.
Caitlin Kelly: So we have to think about why is is it that group projects have become something that is negative, to the point that if you go to Google and you type in
Caitlin Kelly: The idea of a group project and it's immediately a meme presenting some sort of dread at the idea of projects.
Caitlin Kelly: So these are a few of the quotes that I've heard both, both from the student side of disliking or being in favor of group projects and from the
Caitlin Kelly: Teacher side of liking or disliking group projects. So first we have the instructor side group projects are designed to prepare students for future work.
Caitlin Kelly: Place teamwork. And I think this is a really important valid thing to consider, especially because not all students have the opportunity to have a full time or part time job experience when they're in college.
Caitlin Kelly: However, it is really important to think about the fact that the group project setting in the classroom doesn't always transfer with 100% accuracy to the real world workspace because
Caitlin Kelly: You know, in jobs. We all typically have similar schedules or we can get together and work on whatever the group endeavor is whereas in an academic setting.
Caitlin Kelly: People tend to have wildly different schedules. They come from very different backgrounds, etc. So it's not a perfect transfer and it's important to keep that in mind.
Caitlin Kelly: Here's another one that I've heard from instructors. I don't have time to grade that many individual assignments. This is certainly true. I know that grading is a tremendous responsibility that instructors have to take on
Caitlin Kelly: But again, this is the idea of making sure if you do need to use a group project because you have a class that has 100 plus students. We need to make sure that it's really well created and well facilitated
Caitlin Kelly: The students are adults who should be able to learn how to coordinate, this is something that I've heard from instructors that I've worked with in the past. And while I do agree.
Caitlin Kelly: We're going to talk a little bit about
Caitlin Kelly: The different backgrounds of various students, you may see in your classes and how some students simply don't have the experience and working with teams and you might need to give them a few more resources to help them do so efficiently.
Caitlin Kelly: Some students like working with their peers. This is very true. Sometimes you even have students who are in the same
Caitlin Kelly: Dorm if you're in an undergraduate setting or maybe in the same cohort. If you're in a graduate school setting.
Caitlin Kelly: However, it is important to think about the fact that some students do prefer and thrive on solo work this kind of gets into that idea of universal design and how different types of learners have different preferences and different
Caitlin Kelly: Ways of thriving in the learning setting, but we'll talk a little bit about how to make this as efficient and effective as possible for different types of learners.
Caitlin Kelly: This is from the student perspective. I like group projects because I don't have as much work. And this is a very true.
Caitlin Kelly: In a positive way, because you can take on very large group projects that are complex and require multiple stages and all different types of components.
Caitlin Kelly: It's easier to tackle that kind of thing with a team, but in order to make sure that that runs effectively when we need to make sure that there are clear guidelines and suggestions and techniques for delegating work.
Caitlin Kelly: And then here we have the one that I've heard, perhaps most often, which is I hate group projects because I end up doing all the work.
Caitlin Kelly: Like I said, this is where we have to make sure that there are special guidelines, put in place so that students aren't loss on how they should delegate and
Caitlin Kelly: That all students are being held accountable for contributing to the overall project.
Caitlin Kelly: So despite these negative occurrences that can happen with group projects. I think it's important to think about what are the positive aspects of group projects and how can we maximize those while minimizing some of the problems that can commonly occur.
Caitlin Kelly: So here on this side we have some benefits. Some learners perform well with group projects, again, that idea of universal design principles.
Caitlin Kelly: Different learners have different preferences. They have different preferences for how they absorb the learning content for how they interact with the learning content.
Caitlin Kelly: And how they show that they have mastered the learning content. So here you're going to see some students who really, really do well when they have a team to work with.
Caitlin Kelly: Another good aspect of this component is the socialization part where students get to meet one another and make friends or if they're in a higher education setting. It's a really good opportunity to network with other professionals in their fields.
Caitlin Kelly: Then we have the idea of teamwork practice. And as I mentioned before, not all students are able or have time to have any sort of employment, while they are also taking on a full time class schedule.
Caitlin Kelly: So this is where they get to practice skills such as communication.
Caitlin Kelly: Coordination with one another, professionalism negotiation. So that's when they're getting into planning and delegating tasks and figuring out what they want to do for the project.
Caitlin Kelly: And of course, personal accountability is really important to think about, that's a skill that they get to practice when they are working with a team.
Caitlin Kelly: Students can also and having a potentially useful and product. Once the class is complete and that consists gets into the idea of a renewable assignment is a really cool.
Caitlin Kelly: assignments that essentially get students to work on some sort of real world item that's going to
Caitlin Kelly: add value to the world. So it could be something that is research based. It could be something that's designed to educate others. It's something that exists beyond the classroom and these types of projects.
Caitlin Kelly: Tend to be very complex bus group projects are pretty good way to divide the work and delegate and make sure the project runs smoothly.
Caitlin Kelly: And finally, as I touched upon with the grading quotes
Caitlin Kelly: Using a group project format can grace greatly reduce a lot of the work with large projects. So it allows students to divide and conquer something that is very complex.
Caitlin Kelly: It means that there is less greeting for instructors to deal with. And it also means that we can get into some of the higher level learning objectives now.
Caitlin Kelly: On the right side of the slide. This is one of my favorite images that I've used in quite a few workshops. It's the Bloom's Taxonomy pyramid.
Caitlin Kelly: You don't know what Bloom's taxonomy is just very quickly. It essentially a hierarchy of learning outcomes were at the bottom of the pyramid. We have these
Caitlin Kelly: More simplistic learning outcomes such as understanding and remembering those are basic memorization tools.
Caitlin Kelly: And we have those at the bottom because they form a foundation so that we can gradually rise through the tears of learning outcomes. So beyond that we get into application.
Caitlin Kelly: And then eventually we can get into the evaluation and creation learning outcomes.
Caitlin Kelly: And the evaluation and creation learning outcomes are where group projects may be helpful, because you can have students make a really cool complex interesting project and then divide and delegate the work amongst each other.
Caitlin Kelly: So now I want to get into a little bit of research that was actually introduced to me at a conference. I went to fairly recently.
Caitlin Kelly: The Google research team conducted a study in which they collected qualitative interview data on team effectiveness. They asked what makes an effective team.
Caitlin Kelly: And after analyzing the data, data, they came up with five major factors.
Caitlin Kelly: The first one is psychological safety and this means that in order for a team to be effective. They need to feel like they are safe to
Caitlin Kelly: submit their ideas, they are safe to say what their opinion is and what they want to do with the project, they're safe to ask questions and sometimes you know make mistakes and fix those mistakes as needed.
Caitlin Kelly: The second one is dependability, this is a really huge one, and this is the one I hear
Caitlin Kelly: That people comment on the most frequently and that is simply that they want to be able to depend on each group member to do their part toward the overall project.
Caitlin Kelly: The third one is structure and clarity and this is the idea that they want the group project.
Caitlin Kelly: Whether you know this is a school assignment or an actual project. They're doing for work to have clear guidelines clear goals.
Caitlin Kelly: A clear idea of what they're doing, what steps they should take and what the overall scope of the project is
Caitlin Kelly: And the last to kind of go hand in hand. Those are meaning and impact meaning means that it should have some sort of personal importance to them. They shouldn't view it as just an arbitrary task.
Caitlin Kelly: And impact means that people tend to really like it when the group project has some sort of a real world transfer
Caitlin Kelly: Now this is something that I think can be very hard to achieve in an academic setting, depending on what field you're in
Caitlin Kelly: But if you are in a position where students get to do something that exists beyond the scope of the classroom, like a research project or, you know, a website or some other educational material, then that's a really good opportunity to help achieve that impact factor.
Caitlin Kelly: So now we'll get into a couple of tips for ensuring that the design and facilitation of your group project goes well.
Caitlin Kelly: The first tip is to know your learners and I have a diagram listed to the right of the slide about the the concept of the zone of proximal development.
Caitlin Kelly: And the idea here is that learning has these three rings and you can see the dark on in the middle that Sizzler can do this on aided
Caitlin Kelly: The slightly lighter one, which is the zone of proximal development and that's what learners can do with some guidance from someone who has more experience and the outer ring is what the learner cannot do.
Caitlin Kelly: And the basic idea is that learning occurs in this middle, ring this zone of proximal development where
Caitlin Kelly: learners are able to achieve something with the guidance of someone more knowledgeable in this case the instructor
Caitlin Kelly: But they will need a little bit of guidance, a little bit of modeling and scaffolding to help them.
Caitlin Kelly: Bring the things that they cannot do into the realm of the things they can do. And the reason I like to point out this diagram with this particular topic is that
Caitlin Kelly: Different groups of learners may have different levels of scaffolding needs. So you may find that you start one classroom and everyone has had some experience working in a group and thus
Caitlin Kelly: They don't need quite as much guidance and as much scaffolding, but you may have the same class. The following semester and maybe almost no one has had
Caitlin Kelly: Any team work experience and they might need more guidance. This is where you can do things like give some simple assessments to gauge their experience with group work.
Caitlin Kelly: You know something as simple as, you know, raise your hand if you have worked in a group project or and that'll give you an idea.
Caitlin Kelly: Of if you need to give them resources and how to work in a team. If you maybe need to give them a brief little crash course on how teamwork works and how to keep everyone accountable and it'll let you figure out
Caitlin Kelly: How rigid versus loose the structure of your project needs to be how much creative liberty. Can you give your students based on what they know versus what they don't know about working in a group.
Caitlin Kelly: To is to set clear guidelines and for this I like to reference a quote by the Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw and that is the single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.
Caitlin Kelly: And this gets into the idea for me that when in doubt, I put instructions on absolutely everything
Caitlin Kelly: So this helps to reduce as much vagueness for expectations as possible so that students are always knowing what they are supposed to do.
Caitlin Kelly: Again, when in doubt, just right directions. It might seem obvious to us as the creators of instruction, what to do.
Caitlin Kelly: But sometimes I've found that as someone who's writing the expectations for an assignment, it's clear to me because I'm the creator, but it might not be quite as clear to the people who are actually having to do the work.
Caitlin Kelly: And these clear guidelines include steps for the product requirements and grading criteria grading criteria is really important. That's going to be the thing that your students probably care about the most
Caitlin Kelly: And you can break this down really clearly through rubrics by showing them, you know, what does a good grade contain and what does a bad grade black
Caitlin Kelly: If you can get some previous semester examples from students by asking their permission to share your work that can be a really helpful way to model what a good group project looks like.
Caitlin Kelly: And also when you do write your directions and guidelines, please make sure that they are prominent and easy to find in your course, make sure students are able to easily access them and there are no issues with links or anything like that.
Caitlin Kelly: So now we get into the idea of setting up the groups within your group projects, how do you actually divide up people and assign them to groups.
Caitlin Kelly: So this kind of touches upon the idea of establishing accountability among your learner's
Caitlin Kelly: Again, referring to the zone of proximal development for your particular group of learners is helpful here and you'll know exactly how rigid, you need to be in your guidelines for accountability.
Caitlin Kelly: So a few things you can do include making group contracts and having each student guide the con sign the contract to ensure that they follow all the rules and expectations for working in their group.
Caitlin Kelly: There are all different types of options for actually setting up the groups, you could allow students to self select into groups that usually works well with students who have had prior experience.
Caitlin Kelly: With group projects, you can do it randomly. Honestly, I wouldn't suggest this one. This is where you tend to get into issues of schedule conflicts, things like that.
Caitlin Kelly: One interesting thing I heard from a colleague at a conference is that they like to form group projects.
Caitlin Kelly: By schedule so they have students fill out a form saying their schedule and when they are available to work on a group product.
Caitlin Kelly: And then the instructor only matches students whose schedules coincide. So I think that's a really good way to do it.
Caitlin Kelly: You could also do by topic interests. So people who want to work on a particular topic can work together, or you can divide the project into different components and assign a particular component to each person in the class.
Caitlin Kelly: per account accountability. There are a couple ways to do that, you
Caitlin Kelly: Can have the main thing is to essentially have routine group evaluations and how routine. They are is up to you and what you think is appropriate.
Caitlin Kelly: I've been in classes where every week we had to fill out an anonymous form talking about how our group members are performing what they were doing. Well, what could be improved.
Caitlin Kelly: I've been in other classes where after each phase of the project was done we submitted a an evaluation of our teammates and then some wait until the very end of the project for all
Caitlin Kelly: Teammates to evaluate one another. Again, it depends on how much structure and guidance and accountability. You think your group of runners needs.
Caitlin Kelly: And finally tip for is to prepare for contingencies. So we may have some classes where a group simply does not function well together. So figuring out
Caitlin Kelly: You know, if you need to assign different people to other groups and how that work is really important. Sometimes you may have just one person who
Caitlin Kelly: For whatever reason is unable to continue in the group. So having a contingency for
Caitlin Kelly: That person to do solo work can be really important. I've been in some classes where if needed. If one particular group members simply wasn't putting forth the work
Caitlin Kelly: Then other group members could choose to vote that person off the island and then that person would need to
Caitlin Kelly: Fulfill some sort of solo project. So that's one option. And there are many others that you can choose from.
Caitlin Kelly: Giving yourself flexible deadline space. I think is important no matter what. So
Caitlin Kelly: You know, if you have, if you set a deadline that is absolutely the last day. Students can turn in their group project that can get a little bit tricky because if you do have people who are late for
Caitlin Kelly: valid reasons, then you haven't really given yourself much time beyond the date, you've set to deal with that. So I would suggest making it do a little bit earlier than needed so that you give yourself a nice window or
Caitlin Kelly: Working with your students. And finally, it's always important to consider your individuals with diverse needs you may have students who need different accommodations and those are really important to consider and how they will impact the student's ability to do group work.
Caitlin Kelly: So now we finally gotten to the first activity of this workshop. I'm going to essentially give you the opportunity to experience what it's like to work in a group with your peers and come up with a group consensus.
Caitlin Kelly: On the prompts. I'm giving you. So I'm going to split everyone into breakout rooms.
Caitlin Kelly: You'll be given a link to a Google Doc, which contains a very brief case study scenario. It's only a couple paragraphs long
Caitlin Kelly: When you have finished reading the little duck scenario. There are two questions that you can address with your group.
Caitlin Kelly: I'd like for you to decide how you'll answer the questions before we reconvene as a large group. Do you want to come up with a group consensus answer or do you want to divide and conquer.
Caitlin Kelly: The questions amongst yourself. So the choice up to you. But as you make a choice on how you want to do this, I'd like you to reflect on which one you like better. And, you know, what do you think are the pros and cons of each approach.
Caitlin Kelly: When we reconvene in the big room each individual team will have a maximum of one minute to deliver your answers to the activity questions so
Caitlin Kelly: I'm going to stop screen sharing for a moment and I'm going to put the link to the Google Doc, which contains a discussion questions in the chat.
Caitlin Kelly: And I'm going to put everybody into breakout rooms. So, one moment. And I'm going to remain in the main room. So if anyone needs me for anything, please just let me know.
Caitlin Kelly: Hey, welcome back everybody.
Caitlin Kelly: So we had our time for our breakout room discussion. So, can be one. Go ahead and give me an idea of what
Caitlin Kelly: You came up with for the two questions and you have a minute maximum to report.
Erika Fundelius (she/her): Mark. I think that's you.
Mark Watford: Oh, I wasn't sure what group you're in
Mark Watford: Okay. So for the first question we decided that there should be guidelines on slides.
Mark Watford: Such as the number of points that you cover the number of letters or maybe the number of words in each point. So that's visually appealing. Also, we need to limit the number of minutes that each group member should cover on the slide, since they're talking about their personal opinion.
Mark Watford: That we also raise raise the question should all students in the group receive the same grade. So to answer that maybe we could also include peer feedback which would hold group members accountable and we also want to
Mark Watford: Ask add an additional minimum or maximum APA citations for the guidelines of the presentation.
Caitlin Kelly: That's really, really good. I didn't even think about the citation portion. I think that's
Caitlin Kelly: Important and that's something that a lot of students are going to want to know, because it's a lot of work to create the citations and I agree. I think peer feedback is a really good way to keep people accountable.
Caitlin Kelly: So really, really good job. Thank you. Alright, so can another group jump in real quick. Let me know what you think about the question.
Megan Buning, PhD, CMPC: So I was in breakout room to
Megan Buning, PhD, CMPC: Funny. We didn't get very far because we we thought the guidelines of the activity itself may night may not have been as detailed. So we kind of spent more time talking to each other about
Them.
Megan Buning, PhD, CMPC: And then one thing that I had a chance to throw in at the end was I actually do.
Megan Buning, PhD, CMPC: A lot of team assignments and I've been doing it for several years. And one thing that we noticed is that the professor saying he's Professor teamwork, but we're referring to. Everything is group.
Megan Buning, PhD, CMPC: So, you know, having some education up front about the difference between team and group work and what that is and what the students expect out of it is helpful.
Megan Buning, PhD, CMPC: And that's about as far as we got, but we think there needs to be some pre education. I think
Megan Buning, PhD, CMPC: With that assignment.
Caitlin Kelly: Yeah, I think that's a really good point and the prompt
Caitlin Kelly: It mentioned that the specifically that these were freshmen students, so the chances that they will really need
Caitlin Kelly: That extra education on how to function in teams and in group projects is a little bit higher compared to students who have more experience. So yeah, those are really good points. Thank you. All right. Can we get another group.
Lauren Willson (she/her/hers): Right, so
Lauren Willson (she/her/hers): Yeah group for I believe. And we spent more time talking about question two. Then question one, but for Question one. You know, Professor teamwork just needs to provide a lot more
Lauren Willson (she/her/hers): In the way of his expectations specifically for structure. So some of these students, you know, you say you have 1015 minutes. They have no idea how to fill that they have no idea of the structure of a basic presentation.
Lauren Willson (she/her/hers): So you do need to give them all of that information, you know, as you mentioned in your slides and even we also
Lauren Willson (she/her/hers): lose sight of the APA standards, specifically to say we do have to give those expectations for what, you know, which standard you're looking for.
Lauren Willson (she/her/hers): giving students, much more in the way of that information and then with accountability, each of us did have some experience of a professor who had us give feedback on our peers and we all thought that was a really great idea.
Lauren Willson (she/her/hers): But that must come maybe midway through the project, not merely at the end, which is kind of my experience.
Lauren Willson (she/her/hers): And there was also a we floated the idea of adding in structure that requires accountability, like if it would be possible to have a requirement, where all groups have to meet
Lauren Willson (she/her/hers): Once every week or once every two weeks. Something where it can be built into these scaffolding of the grade and not just in those midway through or end of assignment peer feedbacks.
Caitlin Kelly: Right. I think that that's something that
Caitlin Kelly: I always preferred as a student group products that had peer feedback throughout the semester as opposed to simply at the end because that not only gives students that I
Caitlin Kelly: An opportunity to give their peers feedback, but it also lets the instructor know what's going on, just in case they need a little bit more guidance and scaffolding really good job group for. So I think we haven't heard from Groups three to do we have anyone from group three
John Combs (he, him, his): Okay, I think that's, that's me. So we, as we were talking about this, our main conclusion for question. One was that we thought it would be helpful if there was a rubric to go with this. So it actually said like
John Combs (he, him, his): These are the, you know, here's the facts and this is what this means, you know, this is why the facts are included, or whatever. Here's what kind of opinion, we're looking for. Here's how many citations you know really specific on what's expected
John Combs (he, him, his): I also was we were thinking about, like, just a general statement about like why the project is important. Like why you're assigning this presentation, you know, like what's the big deal.
John Combs (he, him, his): Why do we care about this would be helpful in kind of getting people in the right frame.
John Combs (he, him, his): For the second question. We also agreed that like some types of peer assessment would be really helpful for keeping everyone accountable.
John Combs (he, him, his): And perhaps even being specific about the way the grade is calculated. So there's a portion of the grade that's you know your own work and a portion comes from like everyone's together or something. But that might also help if it's really specific, how the grades calculated
Caitlin Kelly: Yeah, all of those are really great points and I especially like that you focused on the why behind the group project because
Caitlin Kelly: That's something that I think is easy to forget. But it's so important. And it really makes a huge impact on students and
Caitlin Kelly: Especially gets into those factors that the Google research article I mentioned talked about where people want to know what's the meaning and what is the impact of this project.
Caitlin Kelly: So yeah, really good job to all of you. Thank you so much for sharing your answers to the discussion questions for sake of time I'm not going to pull up the slide again. But I do want to let all of you know that
Caitlin Kelly: On the PI website where the PI workshop recordings are housed.
Caitlin Kelly: There will be a link to a free eBook on designing and facilitating effective group projects that you can access. So that's just a supplementary resource, you'll have access to after this workshop, but now I'm going to turn it over to to Quinn to share a couple of examples. And we'll
Caitlin Kelly: Move throughout the rest of today's agenda.
TehQuin Forbes (he/him): Everyone so unlike my co presenters. I don't have I'm activities and
Caitlin Kelly: Slides reminder that
TehQuin Forbes (he/him): No group projects and teamwork doesn't have to, you know, be a long weeks long project that can expand this and that. So you can also do smaller activities in your classrooms.
TehQuin Forbes (he/him): They're really effective teaching tools and learning tools. I found because as the teacher.
TehQuin Forbes (he/him): The students sometimes teach themselves or maybe they learned from peers in ways that I'm explaining this. Not quite landing. It's also a great learning tool for the same reason as soon as you're learning from each other.
TehQuin Forbes (he/him): pedagogically it also gives us a chance to get to meet each other.
TehQuin Forbes (he/him): So they can develop study groups. They have someone to text about notably this class, etc. So I always try to get opportunities for students to meet each other in the classroom. I want to help facilitate that.
TehQuin Forbes (he/him): So I'm speaking very specifically to in person teaching, but I think this is also applicable to the new zoom university that we're all doing right
TehQuin Forbes (he/him): But I used to teach statistics and ICT research methods and I would always find ways to give students opportunities to do things in class together and also another big
TehQuin Forbes (he/him): Tip. I will serve, so I will help students over to class periods develop survey instruments, I would divide them up into teams myself.
TehQuin Forbes (he/him): And then I would give them a topic, and they would have to create a survey engine and then that was on Monday, Tuesday, I will take the surveys home and I would type them up and I would make copies for them. So every student got 20 copies every now.
TehQuin Forbes (he/him): And then on Wednesday, the new assignment was okay now take this out into the field on campus and piloted particular survey with other folks.
TehQuin Forbes (he/him): People to take their survey had a proof of survey, how to pilot the survey and then how to revise a survey, based on what questions. Didn't work which flow of questions, didn't work, etc.
TehQuin Forbes (he/him): And you know just off the cuff thinking I can imagine this sort of process working well and say the biological and life sciences, so go out and try to identify some different
TehQuin Forbes (he/him): Flora or Fonda on canvas. I can see this working well in music. So maybe a music survey or even something like an English literature or reading survey.
TehQuin Forbes (he/him): Lens because that's what I've got in my head.
TehQuin Forbes (he/him): But then you can also even think about
TehQuin Forbes (he/him): Switching this to online. There are ways that people can do online surveys, as well.
TehQuin Forbes (he/him): But in this case, the field might be their own social media pages, so share this on your Instagram share this on your Facebook and as a team. We're going to reach more people than we could have just we're doing this on our own with our own sphere of influence.
TehQuin Forbes (he/him): So I just wanna remind everyone that you know group projects and teamwork doesn't have to be weeks long. It can be a couple days longer can be one class period long depending on what your students needs are and what the lesson is that
TehQuin Forbes (he/him): I turn it back over to you, Katie.
Caitlin Kelly: Awesome, thank you to Quinn and I really
Caitlin Kelly: Appreciate that. You brought it all back to what's the purpose of the lesson, and why are using a group project for that. That's awesome. Thank you so much. Alright, so I'm going to turn it over to john for the next phase of the presentation.
John Combs (he, him, his): Alright, thank you.
John Combs (he, him, his): Katie, let me share this
John Combs (he, him, his): All right, everybody should be looking at the PowerPoint. Great. Awesome. Sweet. Let me move this somewhere else. Alright, so
John Combs (he, him, his): Yeah. Good morning, everybody. My name is john combs. I'm a TA in the College of Music
John Combs (he, him, his): And I'm a PI associate this year. And although I teach undergraduate music theory. Today I'm going to speak about the importance of in class collaborative learning techniques general generally as well as a sampling of activities that you can implement in your own classrooms.
John Combs (he, him, his): So first off, what is collaborative learning a lot of this. I'm going to echo what's been said already, but I'll try and be brief and go through this, but
John Combs (he, him, his): It's important to keep in mind that collaborative learning is more than just putting students together and dividing up the work
John Combs (he, him, his): Without specific instructions on how the groups are supposed to function interact and work, it's unlikely that true collaboration will take place, we kind of talked about this with the
John Combs (he, him, his): With the breakout room thing but collaborative learning means that students are actively engaged and collaborating towards stated learning objectives working toward clear learning goals that are shared by both the teacher and the students ensures that the learning will be meaningful.
John Combs (he, him, his): To important characteristics of collaborative learning are promoted interaction, an individual and group accountability. We kind of really already talked about this.
John Combs (he, him, his): Promote interaction means that students are expected to actively help and support one another in the group process, of course, individual and group accountability means that both the group and the individuals within the group are held accountable for achieving their goals.
John Combs (he, him, his): So why collaborative learning is important, again, kind of echo some things here, but always good to point it out. So there's been an explosion of research and the significance of collaborative learning over the last few decades.
John Combs (he, him, his): And important development from cognitive psychology is that as teachers. We cannot simply transfer knowledge to students or pour content into their heads. You can see that happening over on the left side of the cartoon here.
John Combs (he, him, his): Collaborative learning supports what we know about learning from cognitive psychology in that learners must actively engage with the materials in front of them.
John Combs (he, him, his): They literally build their mind by creating mental structures that organize and connect information.
John Combs (he, him, his): Additionally, group work has been shown to enhance achievement and productivity positive attitudes and ethics.
John Combs (he, him, his): Quality of interpersonal relationships and psychological health for students at all levels and of all backgrounds. That's a pretty powerful statement. And these are all big meta studies down here at the bottom that have
John Combs (he, him, his): Really found these advantages. And I mean, that's all students at all levels, all backgrounds. That's really important. So that's just a really big statement on why incorporating this into engineer teaching is just so critical.
John Combs (he, him, his): So collaborative learning can be understood with respect to the formality of the groups, how long the groups work together and the degree to which the groups are part of the structure of the course.
John Combs (he, him, his): So informal activities informal group work, are those that are relatively casual short so they last between maybe two and 10 minutes
John Combs (he, him, his): Tend to last only one class period and the plus for us required little to no advanced preparation on our end
John Combs (he, him, his): More formal activities require advanced preparation and planning, maybe some handouts or even pre teaching, they tend to be longer between 30 and 40 minutes plus and like to Quinn said they might last for multiple class period. So there's kind of we can make this distinction here.
John Combs (he, him, his): Finally team based learning. This is a systematic use of groups throughout the whole semester in which the course is structured around carefully designed group activities.
John Combs (he, him, his): There are considerable benefits to team based learning, but the instructional strategy requires significant preparation and alteration of course structure. For this reason, my presentation today will focus only on group work. That's kind of within the informal and formal realm.
John Combs (he, him, his): So for the rest of my presentation, I'm going to give a brief overview of some well known collaborative learning techniques.
John Combs (he, him, his): I'm going to start with some of those that are more informal that don't really require a lot of planning, you can kind of implement them.
John Combs (he, him, his): Really whenever and then move to those that are more formal. So these are think, pair, share pairs check talking aloud period, problem solving, or taps Jigsaw structured controversy affinity grouping and Roundtable. So these are all collaborative learning techniques that are
John Combs (he, him, his): Not difficult to implement but have great rewards in the classroom. So let's begin.
John Combs (he, him, his): Think, Pair, Share, this is popular informal straightforward way to get students engaged in discussion with relatively little preparation for this activity give students in engaging question or problem.
John Combs (he, him, his): Allows sufficient time for students to think about the problem take notes on their own. Then pair, the students up have them discuss the responses for a short time usually one to two minutes.
John Combs (he, him, his): Online. You can do this with random breakout rooms works really well finally have students share their responses with the class. So it's really that's 123 how it goes.
John Combs (he, him, his): Despite it some formality. A couple things to keep in mind know in advance how you will present the problem to students, you're going to use maybe a worksheet. You had ready
John Combs (he, him, his): On the whiteboard blackboard online on canvas or whatever, where's it going to be, how are they going to know what to do. Also know how students are going to report out
John Combs (he, him, his): Usually instructors, they'll make. They might tell groups to share their most important point, or perhaps to save time, you might instruct groups to share points that haven't been mentioned yet.
John Combs (he, him, his): At the end, it may be appropriate or necessary to synthesize student responses or provide an expert response.
John Combs (he, him, his): Pairs check another informal pairs activity doesn't last long requires little advanced preparation for this activity you put students in pairs.
John Combs (he, him, his): direct them to either coach each other on a specific problem or to check their check their partners reading notes right if there was some type of reading assignment or summary.
John Combs (he, him, his): And this usually lasts for about two minutes or so, this is a great activity for
John Combs (he, him, his): Checking prior knowledge and understanding and this can also bring latent misunderstandings to the surface which is equally important.
John Combs (he, him, his): For this activity. Make sure that students have actually completed the notes if they're to be checked or that they would have sufficient background knowledge to work on the problem that you give them, it would be helpful to to provide sample solutions or a summary at the end.
John Combs (he, him, his): Okay. So next is talking aloud pairs problem solving. So again, another pair thing. It's great.
John Combs (he, him, his): In this activities students solve a series of problems, but each of the students has a specific role. So here we're getting two roles and group activities so
John Combs (he, him, his): One student kind of talks walks through the procedure and otherwise is just kind of thinking aloud.
John Combs (he, him, his): The other student is listening asking questions, encouraging the talker. Okay. And so this is how they solve the problem. One person thinking the other person kind of egging them on expose
John Combs (he, him, his): When that problem is solved the students switch roles for the next problem. So they both have that opportunity to kind of think aloud and coach the other person.
John Combs (he, him, his): This is a great way for students to think critically about problem solving processes and the application of course content.
John Combs (he, him, his): However, there are a few points to keep in mind. Explain the two rules clearly before the activity begins and make sure students understand the procedure.
John Combs (he, him, his): Unless the students have considerable problem solving skills, teach them the skills that they'll need in advance. Finally, because this activity require students to think out loud.
John Combs (he, him, his): It means they're going to be vulnerable to a classmate. So this activity requires an established classroom environment of trust and cooperation, I would not attempt this activity if that's not an environment that you fostered in your class.
John Combs (he, him, his): Okay, now we're going to get into activities that require a little bit more planning a little bit more prep and last a little bit longer first of these is jigsaw.
John Combs (he, him, his): So what happens here. Notice in this on the left side of the diagram we have focus groups and that's what's going on here. And the students are in groups, and they all become experts on a specific topic then
John Combs (he, him, his): What happens is we move to the right side of the figure each expert, we kind of mix everybody up. So now in the new groups.
John Combs (he, him, his): There's each student in the group is an expert on their respective topic and responsible for teaching it to everyone else.
John Combs (he, him, his): This activity is great for promoting independent learning and responsibility, but it requires careful planning of the topics to be used explaining the procedure and monitoring the group size the activities going along.
John Combs (he, him, his): Also this activity may last more or all of the class period or could perhaps occur across multiple class periods.
John Combs (he, him, his): Structured controversy this unfolds groups of four and which each pair is assigned the opposite side of an issue, the pair's research their assigned position.
John Combs (he, him, his): And then once the research is complete. They share what they've learned, but the goal of sharing as much information as possible.
John Combs (he, him, his): Then pair switch sides of their issue and continue working so they kind of get to go back and forth.
John Combs (he, him, his): On a on an issue. This is great for critical thinking, especially when the issue is controversial or contentious.
John Combs (he, him, his): Still the activity is relatively formal that it requires careful consideration of the issues involved the availability of research and resources on the topic and the amount of time needed. Again, this one might last for multiple class periods or most of one class period.
John Combs (he, him, his): Next is affinity grouping.
John Combs (he, him, his): This is a group activity in which students sort ideas into categories students begin by individually generating short phrases or words about a particular topic.
John Combs (he, him, his): Usually they put these on sticky notes slips of paper, then in group students sort these ideas based on similarities or common themes
John Combs (he, him, his): Finally, students create a title or a heading for each grouping. This is a great activity for organizing and categorizing information, especially when the topic is complex or multifaceted
John Combs (he, him, his): In person. This can be done again sticky notes index cards online. This could be facilitated with Google jam board mural board or some other collaborative technology.
John Combs (he, him, his): This activity requires careful consideration of the topic, for instance, it must be complex enough to yield many ideas that could then be sorted also requires a significant amount of time.
John Combs (he, him, his): Keep in mind that the sorting process is complex for students. And that shouldn't start until they've had enough time to generate a multitude of ideas.
John Combs (he, him, his): All right, last one. The last activity. I'll share with you guys is round table. And this is a collaborative writing activity.
John Combs (he, him, his): In groups students. They have like a sheet of paper or a Google Doc, on which they each take turns responding to a prompt
John Combs (he, him, his): Each student should write a few words or sentences and then hand off the page to the next group member. The next student should continue writing where the last student left off.
John Combs (he, him, his): The procedure continues until all students have contributed or a time limits expired. This is an excellent activity for writing and having students detect
John Combs (he, him, his): lines of thought lines of reasoning logic and prose, it's really great for this. This could also be facilitated online through the, you know, a discussion thread on canvas Google Doc, like I mentioned, or some other type of technology.
John Combs (he, him, his): As with previous activities this roundtable requires careful consideration of the prompt, as well as students with relatively strong writing skills.
John Combs (he, him, his): This again when they're writing in front of each other. You kind of have to think about whether your classroom is it welcoming our students.
John Combs (he, him, his): Do they trust one another. Do they feel that it's okay to to fail and share their thoughts and be vulnerable in this way that really has to be present for this activity.
John Combs (he, him, his): This activity may be difficult for for students who have who have trouble expressing themselves and writing which unless this is a foreign language courses, most likely English. So that requires consideration for this activity as well.
John Combs (he, him, his): Okay, so I'm done, I hope that this brief overview of collaborative learning techniques has inspired you to use them in your own classrooms or maybe some others.
John Combs (he, him, his): If you want to know more about the techniques I've discussed, for example, additional suggestions. Other warnings and time limit limits see some of these resources, especially recommended is Barclay up here Barclay cross and major
John Combs (he, him, his): This one's excellent collaborative learning techniques. If you're not familiar with it.
John Combs (he, him, his): Great resource. It has all the ones that I mentioned. And then some lots of detail how to really implement them. I mean really ensure success on these
John Combs (he, him, his): I know that also. This one's available online through the library. So you could go pull it up right now and look if you want it to.
John Combs (he, him, his): These other two are really great. Also the Nielsen, that's just a great resource all around. And then I need a wolf. Look, here is the educational psychology. That's a great one as well.
John Combs (he, him, his): Just a general insight book. But anyway, thank you guys for being on our workshop today and thank you for your time.
Caitlin Kelly: THANK YOU, JOHN. Those are some really cool tips.
Caitlin Kelly: And tricks and techniques for
Caitlin Kelly: group projects. Finally, I am going to turn it over to Melanie
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): Sorry everyone I
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): I forgot I need to unmute myself.
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): So let me share my screen.
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): Thank you for being here. And hopefully you can all see
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): My screen Yes. Great.
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): So, um, I'll talk to you about how to facilitate group work in the classroom and like we've been saying, it'll be both.
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): Obviously, I'll set it up for what I've been doing virtually, but these are things that I've also done, face to face, and so
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): We keep telling you that any of the techniques we've shown you, you can absolutely take back to face to face. Once we're back to being able to to see our students again. Um, so
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): My name is Melanie millionaire like Katie said I am third year PhD student in biology.
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): I've been a TA TA for a few years now and I'm also pi associate
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): obviously have to take this time to invite you to visit me and all of our pie. So should sort of office hours. If you want to discuss any of the things we talked to you today. Any of the technology. I'm about to show you today.
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): You're welcome to come Mondays five to six, even on the spring it on TCP changing these and you can find more information about how to access our office hours through the TA community support side and
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): I last maybe fang or Katie, if we can put that on the website so people can self Enroll today that will be great. And again, today's Monday, so you can come see me later today.
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): So before I tell you more. I want to hear from you. And so these are things that I one thing I need to tell you before I continue, is that I'm not going to own also only be showing you
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): Some of the things that I do and some of the activities I you know having my class for group work.
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): But I'm also modeling things that I actually do. So a lot of what I do today is what I do with my students, and he chose to be
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): Not only engaging, but it allows for students to feel more comfortable to share in their groups. And so the first thing we're going to do is I want to hear from you. And we're going to go to Poll Everywhere.
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): So I already have it set up so I want you to take your phones out and or you can use your computer as well. And what we're going to do. You can see my pole. Right.
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): You can see my pole on the screen. So what I want you to do is, please go and you get out text of these number on top.
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): And you're going to text this or you can go to the website and you're going to tell me what you think report should be or look like. So just one word, what do you think it should be board look like I'm going to give you a few seconds.
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): So that you can start responding
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): And you'll see the responses start showing up.
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): Oh collaboration.
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): It should be useful. Yeah, that's, that's, that's, I like that it should be useful.
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): I say collaboration comes to mind and you if you're familiar with word cloud, which, by the way, I love work cloud and students really like it.
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): You start seeing the words getting bigger and those are the ones that a lot of people think are the most important
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): They should be relevant. That's huge. And we've been learning a lot of that there should be communication productive again collaborative and collaboration seem to be kind of but everything seems to be important for everyone here.
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): Productive useful connecting. Well, I like the connecting part which seems to be a hard part to get students to understand that this is a good way for you to connect with your peers. Right.
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): It should be, let's see, fun, yes, I agree with you. I remember this is their learning experience even when you are in a group work, you want to make it a fun learning experience.
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): So I want you to keep adding things but so that we can keep the activities happening and I love how I like using these on my future workshops. So thank you for helping me with that.
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): And so we're going to go back to technology in a minute, but
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): I have another activity.
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): And so let's do another activity. And again, I'm showing you. I'm both modeling and I'm showing you things that you can use in your own classroom to keep students engaged and to get them to be actively participating in those group activities.
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): John gave us a long list of group activities that you can do. And I always like to go from individual activities that are kind of to get students to be comfortable to more group activities. And so then the next activity will do. I'll give you like three minutes to work individually.
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): You'll provide one answer to each of the two questions. I'll give you and we will go over the answers using paddling
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): So think of these activity as a think, pair, share. Now, unfortunately, I don't have enough time to pair you but I would if I were in a classroom, but this is what you would do the Think, Pair, Share, and we're going to use paddling, which is another
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): tool that you can use online, but you can also use it in the classroom and all the it by the way all the tools I'm using now.
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): I also using my face to face classroom. The students are very familiar and they really enjoy them.
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): So we'll use that lead. Again, I'm going to give you three minutes and I'm going to time it so I know Katie gave us instructions not to use notifications.
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): But as your professor. Today I will go ahead and use this. And by the way, I use this in my classroom as well. I tell my students that I'm using my phone to time so we can stay on track.
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): And and my students really appreciate it. So I'm going to give you three minutes to work. Remember individually, and then I'll bring you back to paddling. So again, think of these as a parachute activity and go
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): I'm gonna mute myself to let you work.
Caitlin Kelly: Melanie, do you have the link
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): Yes, but I want people to first thing
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): Okay, then I'm going to put that path led link on the
Caitlin Kelly: Perfect.
Caitlin Kelly: On the chat.
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): Thank you for reminding
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): So you have about 30 seconds to finish up and and we're going to go ahead and use our path let I put
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): The link to the pamphlet on the chat and it should take you straight to to our side. This is a fruit. If you have any experience Fab Lab. I invite you to do so.
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): We've used it in our workshops before. As you can see, I remember in the summer we had a workshop and so I still have that pamphlet here and I created one for us. So you should be able to start going to the tablet. Right.
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): And you can see people. Oops.
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): So people are starting to put things. Many of you are familiar with things. So you notice that you know you can add and feel free to talk. This is a moment that if you have questions or you want to say something about paddling, but it's easy, you create these free
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): Little sheet. You can add here comments so you can add comments you can add gaps. You can tell your students. What do you want, there are settings where you can
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): For example,
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): Check for, you know, foul language. So I want to allow that to show up. You can give students rules on what they should post
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): But basically, there's some things in here. What kind of people have been putting things diverse perspectives previous negative things. So looking at the difficulties and the benefits of group work.
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): Learning from peers would be a benefit brainstorming things like getting consensus on topics. It's difficult, but it's also what you would like to do and and hopefully as a benefit.
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): And so this is again I'm showing you tools that I use and the you can use in your own to get students to be engaged and also be ready to share
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): Now, I was anticipating maybe having some issues with Pat Flynn. And so another thing you need to keep in the back of your mind is having a backup.
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): And so I created a you know a poll everywhere for that as well, where you could ride your responses free
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): But so always have a backup on those things. Another thing I was thinking, if this technology. So some work. And I'll ask them to put it in the chat. Right.
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): So you want to have. You want to be preparing. That's something we've been telling you about. So thank you for sharing with me and with everybody.
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): And so some of the things that you said in the chat or in the pamphlet, sorry.
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): And we did our public activity. And it's really, it's really a cool setting. I actually designed, you know, the little snail and all that stuff. So you can make it your own.
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): But many of you said that group work was beneficial because you can, you know, share diverse perspectives I so that exam exact word
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): Phrase delegate roles. So you can actually build on those skills. You can tackle complex problems right
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): Because you have more brains thinking, but it's also difficult and Katie, talk to us about days where people can maybe make assumptions about things. So misinterpret what's being discussed. People don't stay on track.
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): They work on the wrong task or you have groups that don't work well. So maybe you have a group of all people that are leaders and so everybody wants to talk
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): And so being able to set up certain rules and certain things before you get in the group work will help you with this difficulties and it's achieved the benefits. The benefits of it.
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): So today, my objective for giving this talk to you and working with you is to get you to experience group work in a virtual setting.
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): And also be able to identify ways in which you can improve or create your own opportunities right so I'm already getting my I'm a little behind, I guess.
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): And so Animal Diversity lab is a lab I teach. And so I'll give you an example of what we do and how we set up some group activities here.
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): I would teach a lot of animal groups and animal diversity of things about evolutionary adaptations and classification and very complex more senior level.
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): Topics, and we do dissections of animals will look a form of function adaptations to to the different groups.
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): And so I always try to think when I designed some of my group activities, things like students and anticipate their actions are like they're off. And that's why I think it's important for you to experience with the students do so be prepare for things. So let's do a quick poll.
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): And let's see. So here's my pole.
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): Oh, Polly Okay perfect, so let's do my first I'm going to stop sharing real quick. So you can see my pole.
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): And so
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): Can you all see my pole.
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): Great. So if you can take a second to answer those.
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): Questions or three questions.
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): I really want to hear from you.
Caitlin Kelly: And Melanie. This is just your 15 minute
Caitlin Kelly: Notification yes
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): Great. So if we can get more people to vote.
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): 36%
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): So remember to go down so you can vote on the other one. Right.
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): So how about. Yeah, if I can get maybe a couple more people
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): Great. So I'm going to end our poll. This is we have about 72% of people voted. That's a good number. So let me end. And I'm going to share the results with you.
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): You can see the results right so we have sorry my dog has decided that she wants to join us.
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): So which of these things are best ways to describe certain preparation for work. So definitely having a quiz before the homework.
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): Reading or having quiz of the homework reading before so that you know that they're prepared. I agree with you on that.
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): The reason why some people go off task because all of these are correct, they're bored, they're confused. They're not prepare. So having a quiz beforehand would help. And if students are absent, I would say that
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): I would, and I know most of you said, leave out the apps instance portion for the day's
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): Outcome. And I would say that also having the entire group come to a consensus on how they're going to address that because it's their group work right. And so hopefully if you have these consecutive
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): group activities that they all get to, to decide on what needs to be done. So let me share my screen again. And so going back to our me. I don't need that.
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): So group work processes in the classroom and things that I do and this is kind of going back to the answers to your poles.
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): Is things like you need to explain the group ground rules. So these would be you've already designed your group work, and now you're going to do these. So you're going to assign group roles.
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): You're going to describe the assignment, you're going to give specific instructions about the length of the activity and the instructions, what they need to do for how long were
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): And we'd be modeling some of that asked and see if they have questions about any of these monitor, but don't hover. So let them, you know, you want to be there to kind of check with the students are saying, but let them collaborate
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): Bring it back to the classroom so that the entire group can come to a consensus and then commit to continuous improvement and I show you very quickly. Some of these examples.
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): So I've done the poll and one of the first thing I mentioned to you was establishing group norms. So you don't want to see see things like hi go work in a group and then everybody's working individually. You want to let them know
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): What the norms are so that you can see things like discussion and collaboration and you have these these interactions that are happening.
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): And so you also want to explain those ground ground rules, right, things like I really like this from the web, where these professor had these on their syllabus talking about
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): Team right how we are a team. And so we're went to work together and I know someone brought it up on how team and group would be difficult different
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): And you can establish your own group work, but you can also let your students establish what they think would work for them.
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): As as a whole class and I think this would be helpful, depending on your class.
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): I'm assigned group roles and so we'll do this in a second. But this is huge. So that people are not just quietly waiting to see who's going to talk right
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): And you can do this. I let my students, select their own, but if you are more comfortable assigning your students roles, because you know them already, and then have them switch those roles. The next time you group them.
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): Describe the assignment. Well, and give specific instructions. So you notice what I do and how long and where do they need to go and what they need to do.
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): Have done to Paul already what this is what the student seen my class. So they would come with empty questions and then I would come and ask them really easy questions to start to get them to in the group work.
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): Be more comfortable answering because they know the answers. And then you get them to answer more challenging questions where they have to think and argue and discuss more
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): And so you want to start with those things so that the group, it's, it's more interactive.
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): I bring it back to the larger classroom by doing activities like a hood and like I said, I use all my technology both face to face on online and this gives you an opportunity to review in an interactive way with the students in the entire classroom. Right.
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): I'm committed to continuous improvement. I love using Poll Everywhere anonymous feedback from students and ask them what they want to do, or what I can do better to improve our activities.
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): And we talked about self assessment and group assessments, so definitely use things like this that are very simple. I found this online from one of the professors
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): And you can have people self assess their group work and assess other peers. And so we have something like this in my class where students know that they're going to be graded at the end by their peers and that's part of participation.
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): And so now I have an activity which we're going to do for a little bit less than the time probably so we're going to work. These are our team rules.
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): We're going to work together. We're going to explain and give reasons for our ideas we're going to ask and share ideas and we're going to always rely on our members, before we go to anyone else.
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): You're going to have 10 minutes. So it's going to be a little bit last but I'll call you in and these okay these are things that happen.
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): I think individually for about two minutes. I would say actually less maybe a minute.
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): And then share for about eight minutes with the group. So again, I'll call you just share us as much as you can. You should each contribute one idea.
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): To one, and I'll show you the, the question in a minute. But what their idea would be bring up one idea that you think you can about our group activity that you're going to apply in your
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): Classroom can be anything you can be very specific or very vague, but
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): We're just trying to get you to think of activities. So again, you'll have a minute to think individually, you're going to come up and you're going to share with the group and each of you will contribute one idea.
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): You'll have work. Work roles. So you need to pick. Who's going to be the recorder. Who's going to be the reflector, so help members come to a conclusion.
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): Is very vague, who's going to be the facilitator, so it's going to keep you on track with timekeeping as well. And who's going to talk. And so let's go into the breakout room. See if I can have Katie, if you can split them, please.
Yes.
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): And so I'll see you back. I'll tell you in a few minutes, I'll call you back to the main room.
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): And I'll put the question in the chat so everybody can get
Caitlin Kelly: It. I'm just moving people around a little bit.
Caitlin Kelly: More even number.
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): Okay, it
Caitlin Kelly: Should go now.
Melanie Medina (she/her/ella): Kind of feedback. If you have any questions for any of us. I'm sure we can hang around for a minute or two, but thank you everyone.
Farrah Hersh: Thank you.
Caitlin Kelly: Thank you. Melanie. That was really awesome practice for the types of things are students will be doing
Caitlin Kelly: And thank you to all of you for attending our workshop today. We're so glad to get to talk to all of you about this topic.
Caitlin Kelly: Falling has blinked. The feedback survey for this workshop in the chat. And we also have our next workshop coming up. I'm just pulling up the schedule to make sure I get it right.
Caitlin Kelly: On November 30. Now this is a special workshop in that the same workshop is going to be offered on two dates. It's November 30 and December 1
Caitlin Kelly: Both two o'clock pm to 3:30pm it's on the topic of teaching online approaches to pedagogy and courses on and one of our fantastic
Caitlin Kelly: Office of distance learning colleagues is going to be hosting this workshop. It is a limited capacity to ensure interaction. So that's why we're having it on two different dates but just keep in mind. It is the same workshop in two different dates. You don't have to go to both
Caitlin Kelly: But thank you again. We really appreciate you taking the time to come and you know hey out with us and talk about this on topic and thank you to my co presenters. You did a really, really awesome job with the presentations.
Caitlin Kelly: All right. Well, with that, I will go ahead and close this, the session, the workshop recording will be available on the PI website and have a lovely rest of your day.