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Slide Notes

"How can we best prepare children and adolescents to thrive in the 21st century—an era of rapidly evolving technology and new opportunities to learn, collaborative and global knowledge work, changing workforce needs, and complex economic and national security interests? ...creating opportunities to engage and develop a much richer set of skills is critical. Today, this includes exploring the potential of 'noncognitive' factors—attributes, dispositions, social skills, attitudes, and intrapersonal resources, independent of intellectual ability—that high-achieving individuals draw upon to succeed."
-US Dept. of Ed.,
"Expanding Evidence Approaches for Learning in a Digital World"
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Building Learning Community

Published on Nov 25, 2015

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PRESENTATION OUTLINE

Fostering Student Grit, Tenacity & Perseverance

"How can we best prepare children and adolescents to thrive in the 21st century—an era of rapidly evolving technology and new opportunities to learn, collaborative and global knowledge work, changing workforce needs, and complex economic and national security interests? ...creating opportunities to engage and develop a much richer set of skills is critical. Today, this includes exploring the potential of 'noncognitive' factors—attributes, dispositions, social skills, attitudes, and intrapersonal resources, independent of intellectual ability—that high-achieving individuals draw upon to succeed."
-US Dept. of Ed.,
"Expanding Evidence Approaches for Learning in a Digital World"
Photo by aquababe

Building Learning Community

By Intent & Design!
Distance education has pushed the scholarship for what a learning "community" means that has advanced the field for face to face instructors as well.

Research is showing that simply showing up in the same room together twice a week and assuming a productive learning "community" will "happen" is a false assumption.

An effective and functioning learning community needs structure, thought, intent and to be baked into our classroom by design.

Why its Worth It!

"...Learning is enhanced when it is more like a team effort that a solo race. Good learning, like good work, is collaborative and social, not competitive and isolated. Working with others often increases involvement in learning. Sharing one's own ideas and responding to others' reactions sharpens thinking and deepens understanding."
-Chickering & Gamson,
7 Best Practices

"Multiple studies document increased student retention and persistence, as well as increased student learning and achievement."
-"The Case for Learning Communities"
http://tinyurl.com/caseforlc
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What is/Isn't Community?

"The defining quality of a learning community is that there is a culture of learning, in which everyone is involved in a collective effort of understanding.... If a learning community is presented with a problem, then the learning community can bring its collective knowledge to bear on the problem. It is not necessary that each member assimilate everything that the community knows, but each should know who within the community has relevant expertise to address any problem."
-Bielaczyc & Collins,
"Learning Communities in Classrooms"
http://tinyurl.com/lcinclassrms (PDF)

Garrison, Anderson & Archer Community of Inquiry

"Social presence is “the ability of participants to identify with the community (e.g., course of study), communicate purposefully in a trusting environment, and develop inter-personal relationships by way of projecting their individual personalities.” (Garrison, 2009)

Teaching Presence is the design, facilitation, and direction of cognitive and social processes for the purpose of realizing personally meaningful and educationally worthwhile learning outcomes (Anderson, Rourke, Garrison, & Archer, 2001).

Cognitive Presence is the extent to which learners are able to construct and confirm meaning through sustained reflection and discourse (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2001).
https://coi.athabascau.ca/coi-model/

Obstacles

to an effective Learning Community?
While it all sounds great and good, there are several obstacles that have to be overcome or accounted for to reach the benefits of community...
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Flung Spaghetti

One common source of resistance to structures and process for classroom learning community is non-integrated or haphazard design of community elements.

For students, this often creates twitches and a history of failed or "time wasting" exercises that do not move the needle of their learning.

For faculty, lack of up-front design of structure, sequence and integration with course goals and assessments, leads to giving up prematurely on "failed" community efforts.
Photo by kennymatic

Bad History

Following the fallout of Flung spaghetti community attempts is a bad history of any class community or group interactions.

"Freeloaders" or lack of accountability to ALL group participants typically leads to one or a couple group members doing ALL/MOST of heavy lifting for work. This leaves an often bad reaction to any attempts at intensive group collaboration or interactive techniques.

As such community building interactions need clear structure and accountability.

Time

Framed in the context of class being simply a race for the instructor to "cover" material within the allocated 16 weeks, time for "touchy-feely" community building activities does not seem doable.

Yet this is where digging into the research, passive monotone lectures of faculty hurrying through walls of PowerPoint decks does not lead to meaningful or lasting learning for the vast majority of learners.

As such, collaborative community building work must be deeply embedded into the design of the course to get the full benefits AND earn its keep!

Lone Rangers

Based on all of the above, there are a nu8mber of students who believe they learn best ALONE and without any community.

Research has revealed that roughly only *2%* of college students are ACTUAL fully Independent learners. Those that are aware of their effectiveness are not always open to supporting community building.

As such, the VALUE and POWER of community learning vs. individual needs to be CONSTANTLY voiced and demonstrated.
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What are Best Practice Techniques?

Good news is that a Wealth of scholarship, research best practices is now available to be drawn on for practical and proven models and techniques...

Leading resources:
-Team Based Learning
www.teambasedlearning.org

-Community of Inquiry
https://coi.athabascau.ca/

-
Photo by striatic

Getting That Initial Buy-In

BEFORE STARTING and FORMING YOUR GROUPS You will need to lay out your rationale' for why you have determined that formal group interaction is to be used.

Key points:
* Very few careers involve NOT working with a team.

* Employers are desperate for employees who can work with others different from themselves & America is becoming increasingly more diverse.

* You are going to avoid common mistakes in class groups :)

* Emphasize mechanisms for accountability to + contributions to tasks.

* Collaborative group work is a demonstrated more effective than all lecture format for vast majority of learners.
Photo by mahalie

Group Formation

Critical instructor job
As a general rule, instructors should form groups, NOT students.
Group formation should aim for:
1-"Breaking up" cliques so pre-existing relationships do not give anyone head starts in forming a working dynamic.

2-EVENLY distribute class talents and liabilities among groups. (IE not a group of all Type A students or all D students)

Matthew Sweet has created a technique to make a mixed list of assets & liability traits for a subject. Then tell students 1st trait they hear that matches them in any way to go and stand by wall. Then count off at end to form x number of needed groups.
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All Pulling Weight

Structured accountability measures must be put in place to avoid "Freeloading."

* Tasks and Group products must be structured so that ALL members can contribute -- longer written work or reports inevitably fall to the most motivated type A team members-so simply means to express group decisions (A, B, C or D or a specific choice)

All group members must be accountable for reporting/ articulating the group's thinking/decisions.

* Peer evals for team contributions (and or respect for others ideas and preparation etc.) as part of their participation grade is another tool.
Photo by Steve Selwood

Create the Climate

* Support and enforce positive group norms.

* Clear consequences (grade, disciplinary etc.) for disruptive or non-contributing or going it alone team members.

* Consciously organize yourself (via tally marks, team roster check boxes etc.) to call on *different* members of each team EACH TIME to articulate the team's thinking so everybody knows they need to be accountable.

* Structure Intra-Team questions/problems assigned to groups to have the "4 S'" 1-SIGNIFICANT PROBLEM, 2-SAME PROBLEM,
3-SPECIFIC CHOICE & 4-SIMULTANEOUS REPORT
(Michaelsen, Sweet & Parmalee 2009)

* Facilitate inter-Team debates or discussions to focus on "whys" of team thinking and contrast that.

* Structure respectful debate and challenging of thinking and assumptions between groups/teams - friendly team contests for best answer/ highest quiz scores etc. for extra credit BUILD teams!
Photo by Matt. Create.

Team Based Learning

A ready made and proven "off the shelf" course design approach to incorporate best practices for collaborative small group work is TEAM BASED LEARNING (TBL).

Stable term-long Teams are formed and are the core unit for every class. Students prep for a new unit individually outside of class and then 1st thing in class take a "readiness quiz" individually and then same quiz again as a Team (usually averaging the 2 scores) to quickly identify areas in need of attention. the instructor can offer a brief mini lecture on hazy areas. Then the rest of the unit's class time is focused on *Applying* and *refining Understanding* of the material via "4S" team problems/questions.
For more see: http://tblc.roundtablelive.org/starting

The Fish Bowl 

A small-scale class activity and or something that can be done with TBL is to regularly take one team/group and make them be the "fishbowl" group. Arrange the classroom so the fishbowl group is in the middle with the rest of class in a circle facing the group. Give the fishbowl group a task or decision or problem to solve or discuss. The rest of class can then be assigned to quietly take notes, observing group dynamics, statements, thinking or nonverbals of the fishbowl group as they work through their group decision.

After a set time, the fishbowl group must conclude and then listen as the outside circle discusses their thoughts or analysis of the fishbowl groups gaps or positives.
SEE ALSO:
http://www.learner.org/workshops/tml/workshop3/teaching2.html

Think Pair Share

Smaller scale activities are available that can be used outside of a full team/group setup as well as with a team/group structure...such as the "THINK-PAIR-SHARE".

The nutshell is a prompt (usually open ended) is given to the class and then ask EVERY student to individually write down their initial reactions/thinking.

After a specified time, have the class break into their established teams/groups or form small groups or even "pairs." Everyone must share with their teammates their thoughts and come to a shared conclusion/understanding answer, which they then share with the class. The instructor can then facilitate discussion or use this as a jumping off point for the next activity.
SEE ALSO:
http://serc.carleton.edu/introgeo/interactive/tpshare.html


Peer Critique

Another technique that can be done alone or with pre-formed group structure is a Peer Critique/Review.

The structure can vary depending on objectives and context. However the concept is to have some tangible work product - paper, project, analysis etc. etc. that can be shared and analyzed within small groups (and alternately followup with the class).

The key is to provide clear guidelines and structure and preparation to have students engage and contribute meaningful feedback applying course material and concepts.
SEE ALSO:
http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/effective-teaching-strategies/peer-cri...
http://teachingcenter.wustl.edu/strategies/Pages/peer-review-how-to.aspx#.V...

So what tools do we use?

While many of these techniques are relatively straight forward there are specific tools (low tech and otherwise) than can help these activities or extend possibilities of what we can do with these techniques...

IF-AT "Scratch off" Forms

To get/give teams opportunities to compare understandings of new material (and or show level of preparation & contribution to team) immediate feedback "scratch off" quiz forms are excellent!

It is a ready made tool to incentivize (as well as make transparent) teams functioning and peer mentoring by putting points on the table.

You can key quizzes/tests to IF-AT forms. Teams then have to come to ONE answer and scratch off to see if correct.
SEE: http://www.epsteineducation.com/home/about/default.aspx

Small Whiteboards

Portable Whiteboards that can be passed around and or held up/hung up to report team answers/ work can be very helpful to quickly make contrasts or divergent team thinking or conclusions.
Photo by eekim

Color Index Cards

A quick and transparent way for ALL to see differences in group thinking is color-coded index cards or sheets of paper (A=blue, B=yellow or RED = NO GREEN = yes etc. etc.).

The key to this is the "Simultaneous Reveal" of each team holding up their color coded response at THE SAME TIME... this naturally leads to questions and discussions of WHY or how other groups picked a different color answer. (note the look of the student with ballcap in middle with GREEN sheet!)

Discussions

In-Person & Online
Electronic tools to extend/ support group work online include Discussion forums in Canvas.

SEE TUTORIAL AT:
http://guides.instructure.com/m/4152/l/49996-how-do-i-start-a-discussion

Canvas Groups

Canvas also allows you to define student groups to allow for group assignments, group discussions, file sharing etc.

TUTORIAL AT:
http://guides.instructure.com/m/4152/l/55485-how-do-i-create-a-new-group-se...

Canvas Peer Review

Canvas also allows for Peer Reviewing of Canvas assignments.

TUTORIAL at:
http://guides.instructure.com/m/4152/l/54249-how-do-i-create-a-peer-review-...

integrate

Regardless of where/how you begin your implementation of a learning community and or collaborative group/teamwork, MAKE SURE the activity incorporates best practices and DEEPLY integrated into the course setup.

Clearly, to get the maximum benefits out of the potential of learning communities, you need to make a strong commitment to these structures and activities.
Photo by ahh.photo

Final thought

"It is not more bigness that should be our goal. We must attempt, rather, to bring people back to...the warmth of community, to the worth of individual effort and responsibility...and of individuals working together as a community, to better their lives and their children's future."
-Robert F. Kennedy
Photo by xavi talleda