Designing Collaborative Learning Activities, Assignments, and Assessments: Practical Tips for the Classroom

Jane Lister-Reis North Seattle Community College

jreis@sccd.ctc.edu

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Why Collaboration?What do we know of its potential for learning?

Sandy Koufax played with the Dodgers from 1955-66. He was perhaps the only major-league pitcher whose fastball could be heard to hum. Opposing batters, instead of talking and joking around in the dugout, would sit quietly and listen for Koufax’s fastball to hum. Koufax struck out 2,396 batters between 1955 and 1966.

Isn’t being a talented individual enough?

What did Koufax need in order to be successful?

A catcher able to catch his fast ball.

“Only as part of a team could Koufax achieve greatness. In baseball and in the classroom, it takes a team effort. Extraordinary achievement comes more often from cooperative groups than from isolated individuals competing with each other or working alone.” -- David Johnson, Roger JohnsonAssessing Students in Groups: Promoting Group Responsibility and Individual Accountability, Corwin Press, 2004

“[Effective learning teams] help individual members of the team better understand the material, and the team becomes capable of solving very challenging and complex problems that are well beyond the capability of the best student in the class working alone.” -- L. Dee FinkBeyond Small Groups: Harnessing the Extraordinary Power of Learning Teams

This workshop is about student seminars and how they create a unique and powerful way for your students to engage in learning challenging ideas and complex ideas through a relational and collaborative inquiry process.

What is a Seminar?

“Seminar is a long-established term in education, yet it is ambiguous and covers a variety of circumstances. Three common seminars are:

(1) the graduate style seminar in which students present formal papers to their peers and receive questions and criticism in response,

(2) the Socratic seminar in which a teacher leads her students to a preordained conclusion through carefully formulated questions and the deft art of conversation management, and

What is a Seminar?

(3) the open-ended seminar to which students bring their own questions (about some topic or reading) and in which, through conversation and inquiry, they address some of these questions” (Finkel, Teaching with Your Mouth Shut).

Three Principles of anOpen-Ended Seminar

1. The purpose of the seminar is for the students to deepen their understanding of something they have already examined: a book, a chapter, a problem, a case study, an article, a film, a play, a lecture delivered previously, or any potentially educational experience from the recent past (e.g., lab, fieldtrip, political event).

2. The outcome of the seminar must not be predetermined; the seminar must really be open-ended. The teacher will have hopes about what will be learned, but must arrange things so that genuine inquiry can take place. The instructor also expects the students to make discoveries surprising to her as well as to them.

3. A variety of roles are open to the teacher, but he must eschew any role that turns his primary work into Telling; the students must be convinced that they will have to do the hard work of inquiry (Finkel).

Exercise: Read ‘What’s in a Seminar” by Jim Harnish (NSCC). As you read, underline the passages that interest/confuse/delight you. Once you’ve finished, go back and prioritize what you’ve underlined. Select one passage to discuss. Quickly make some notes about what you think the author is saying, its contextual importance, and why it’s important to you.

Seminar Protocol: Take turns reading aloud your identified passage, state what it means and its relevance to you. Your group can ask open ended questions that deepen and expand your thinking.

A Taste of a Seminar

Now that we understand the basic concept of a seminar, how do we as faculty set up a class learning environment so that the open-ended seminar becomes the signature pedagogy for students to co-construct new knowledge?

Faculty Responsibilities

• Decide on the central questions (list in your syllabus).

• Select great books/readings/issues or problems that will challenge your class and support a dialogic inquiry process.

• Sequence the learning activities (readings, writings, lectures, concept workshops, class discussions) to flow with the seminars in terms of learning difficulty.

• Determine when and what to assess – create self, peer and faculty assessments along the way that will allow you and your students to understand where their strengths and challenges are in relationship to their learning.

• Create a meaningful capstone experience that integrates their learning experience.

Conceptual Challenges of Seminars

Students need to be able to understand:• Concept of interdependence (what I do affects

whole)• Importance of Balance (social and task)• Self and Group Awareness (how did I do; how

did my group do?)• Willingness to challenge their assumptions

about concepts and others (critical thinking)• Willingness to be changed (transformative

learning experience)

Seminar Video

The Integrated Studies Committee at NSCC created a video in order that students (and new faculty) could more easily grasp complex ideas within a student seminar:

http://www.scctv.net/original-programming/college-programs

(Scroll down to North programs; Click on "Seminar: A Skill Everyone Can Learn")

Student LearningOutcomes from Seminaring

• Critical and Reflective Thinking• Introduction into Systems Thinking (concepts of

interdependence/self regulating/pattern emergence)• Respect for & Understanding of the Need for

Differences• Awareness of Authentic Voice (their own and others)• Becoming a Self-Directed Learner• Concept of being fully present• New Relational Skills (Listening, Asking Questions)• Collective Leadership and Group Facilitation Skills• Development of a Real Love of Learning

Disciplinary Discussion

How might you use this pedagogy of an open-ended student seminar in your course?

“Separating power from authority thus lies at the heart of teaching with your mouth shut. It is the key to the transfer of power from the older generation to the younger. It is the central distinction upon which the development of democracy rests” (Finkel, 133).

Final Thoughts:

Resources

Texts:Teaching with Your Mouth Shut, Donald L. Finkel, Boynton/Cook Publishers, 2000.

Handouts: Handout plus URL: http://facweb.northseattle.edu/jreis/New%20Faculty%20Orientation%202009/