5 Strategies to Deepen Student Collaboration | Edutopia - 2 views
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d_rutherford_8 on 23 Nov 16In order to make collaborative tasks authentic, we have to make them complex enough that working together makes sense.
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One way to do this is through rigorous projects that require students to identify a problem (for example, balancing population growth in their city with protection of existing green spaces) and agree—through research, discussion, debate, and time to develop their ideas—on a solution which they must then propose together.
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We have to help students understand the what, why, and how of collaboration. We can do this in several ways:
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It's not enough to just force student groups; we have to get them to see the benefits of collaboration and what successful collaboration looks like. It's important for us to teach them these skills.
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Design meaningful team roles that relate to the content and to the task.
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assessing students both individually and as a group.
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individual accountability
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small groups
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evaluate their own participation and effort
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Many group projects are based on efficiency, dividing labor to create a product in the most effective way possible. This focus on the product means that we often ignore the process of collaboration.
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Focus on the process in addition to the product to see how students have benefitted from the collaborative process.
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Collaboration should not just strengthen students’ existing skills but ensure that their interactions stretch existing knowledge and expand one another’s expertise.
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we want to ensure that students don’t just occupy the same physical space but that they share an intellectual space—that they learn more, do more, and experience more together than they would alone.
