Online Student Collaboration

41st Annual AMATYC ConferenceNew Orleans, LA

November 19, 2015

Why is collaboration important? Student-student interaction has been shown to be a major contributor to

student success in online classes:

In a 2014 empirical study by Marlowe Mager of Haywood Community College, the number of student-student interactions was the best predictor of student success in the online classes that he studies.

Online collaboration is an increasingly important skill in the workplace and is predicted to be a vital skill for virtually all future careers.

It is an online best practice.

It starts with introductions

Be sure to introduce yourself and set the tone for what you are expecting from your students’ introductions.

Generic Introduction

Welcome to this course! Please introduce yourself to your classmates in this forum. In your introduction, please tell us:

1. Your name and what you prefer to be called.

2. Your major/ program of study.

3. Why you are taking this course.

4. What you plan to be doing 5 years from now.

Discipline specific introductions

This semester will talk about interpersonal relationships in four main categories: Family, Friends, Romance and Workplace. Reflect on your relationships in these areas and then share which relationships you want to grow in your ability to communicate with the most and why you feel that way.

Another discipline specific idea

Go to http://www.startheregoplaces.com/.

Click on Why Accounting?

Click on FutureMe.

Post the CPA career that you would chose. Explain how you arrived at this conclusion.

Ice Breaker Questions Favorite book(s), music artist(s), place you have visited #1 place you would like to visit Hobbies Favorite thing to eat on a hot day Favorite thing to eat on a cold day If you could be any candy bar, what would you be and

why?

Two Lies and a Truth

Each student presents 3 “facts”. Classmates respond by guessing which is the lie.

Whimsical FactsI have two parakeets, Ada Byron Lovelace (Lovey) who can't decide if she's a girl or a boy and Lady Violet who thinks she is a bat. Here she is hanging by her feet.

Student post

Groups

How to divide people into groups Self select or instructor select? Base your decision on what your learned from

the intros Address apprehension, good experience so far

Group Size

Four to Six (Announce four to five, allow six).

Groups of 3 do not work (retention is too variable).

Group Identity

Groups pick their own names. Allow personalization on Group pages on

Blackboard. Use Group Discussion Board for some

attendance posts.

Resistance to group work Restate the reasons for group work and ask them to give it a

try. If you allow students to select their group, email

procrastinators to say if they don’t a group, you will assign them to one.

If there are one or two who don’t join a group, add them (separately) to a large group.

If there are four or five who don’t join a group, create a group just for them.

Resist the urge to name that group yourself!

Discussions

Group discussions vs. whole class discussions If a certain response will be heard more than a

few times in a class, make it a group discussion. Discussions that include tips for the entire class

(test questions, etc.) should use the class discussion board.

Class Discussion Examples “Questions: Post you questions and/or answers to other

students' questions here.” “Post one example of an application of Consumer Loans that

you would find usefully personally or professionally.” (MAT 110) “Come up with a research question related to your area of

study and post it here. Explain what type of study would be best to answer your question.” (MAT 152)

Group Discussion Examples “Post one example of an application of mean, median or mode

that you would find usefully personally or professionally.” “Make a plan for completing the Standard Deviation Lab by

discussing it between 10/22 and 10/24.Finalize your work on the Standard Deviation Lab by discussing it between 10/25 and 10/27. Have one group member submit your group project via the assignment link by 10/27.”

Group Activities Encourage collaboration with questions/projects that require

discussion. Start small and build:

First Group Assignment should be very straight-forward where students can easily compare answers.

Discourage “breaking up” the activity.

When they break up work, they all suffer when answers from some students are wrong.

Later Assignments involve more variety of opinions and explanations.

Math. Measurement and Literacy ActivitiesGeometry Lab - Roofing a Barn:

In this lab you will determine the cost of putting a roof on a barn. In order to find a true cost you will need to know the exact area of the roof in order to find the cost of materials.

This lab is very straightforward and only involves calculation.

Budget Lab: Look at the Baggins family expenses found on the attached Excel sheet.

Research ways in which the family can cut its monthly expenses and balance its budget. Divide the research up among your group then consolidate your recommendations on your Final Worksheet.

This lab involves analysis and decision making.

Geometry vs. Budget Group Discussions

Notice that the Budget Lab which called for opinions and analysis generated twice as much discussion as the Geometry Lab which only required calculation.

Rubrics Consider adding a rubric for group projects.

Budget Lab Rubric: Criteria Excellent Good Average Needs

Improvement

Criteria Guidelines

Well considered, thoroughly researched recommendations

Well considered, somewhat researched recommendations

Well considered recommendations, little research

Poor recommendations, little research

Criteria Points

A B C D-F

Intro. Statistics ActivitiesProbability Assignment

Instructions: “The two-way table given below summarizes how students performed in three sections of MAT 152 on the Unit 1 Test. Use this information to answer the probability questions that follow.” This is the first lab given after groups are formed. Students generally complete the lab and compare numerical answers Example DB Post: “After going over my answer and yours, I am going

to have to agree with all of yours. I made a some mistakes on four of my answers. It looks like so far that yours is the best one to turn in.”

Normal Distribution Assignment

Most of the questions in this lab are open-ended and require student judgments and explanations. “Explain how the Normal Distribution and the Standard Normal

Distribution are related.” “Explain why the standard deviation of a sampling distribution is

smaller than the standard deviation of its parent distribution.”

Example DB Post: “The mean of the sampling distribution is not always the same as non-normal parent distributions, …”

Timber Lab Suppose you were a tree farmer and you wanted to know just

how much lumber you could harvest from your land. The mathematical way of doing this would be to mark off a

small piece of the land in question and use this small sample to represent the whole forest. It won’t be completely accurate, but if you are careful you should be able to get a good estimate.

You will be assigned a triangular plot of land with pine trees on it.

Each group will only work with one set of data.

Conic Sections in the Real World

Conic sections occur in natural, mechanical, and physical settings in the world around us – the orbits of the planets around the sun are elliptical, the path of a projectile (such as a cannonball) is parabolic, and the patterns formed on a wall by a lamp shade are hyperbolic. While many of these phenomena would be difficult to measure, your goal in this project is to find conic sections that exist in your everyday lives and analyze them further. Research the topic on the internet to get more ideas of how/where conics exist in nature.

Tools for Collaboration

File Exchange Group Discussion Board Skype/Hangouts Google Docs Face to Face Meetings Texting/Calling

Contact us:

Joan Romano: jiromano@waketech.edu

James Hedges: jphedges@waketech.edu

Wake Technical Community College

Raleigh, NC