Ways to Make Group Collaborations Work
A recent post on Faculty Focus, Making the Most of ‘Reporting Out’ after Group Work, suggests ways to help you make the most out of group collaborations. Whether groups are collaborating in-person during class or via a break-out session during a web meeting, having students share or report out what they learned during their collaboration is a common approach for group activities.
To make that process more effective, the author suggests taking a strategic approach to the final debriefing. Suggestions include providing students with guidelines on what they should report out (rather than having them just summarize what they did). Other suggestions are to have groups report out in phases and to have them share only new points or ideas (rather than reporting out in full). The author also recommends giving students the opportunity to reflect on what they learned during the reporting out process.
More about Groups
Want to learn more about other ways to enable effective group collaborations? Here’s a few blog posts from the archives that can help:
Making Groups Projects Work for Online Classes
Encouraging Full Participation in Groups Projects
More on Making Groups Projects Work for Online Classes
Group Projects Need Team Charters
Five Design Strategies for Online Group Collaboration
Groups in Canvas
Did you know that Canvas allows you to have students complete both graded and ungraded group discussions? Or that you can create group assignments that can be assigned only to one particular group in your class? Or that your assignments can include group peer review of other groups’ submissions? If you want to learn more, the Groups section of the Canvas Instructor Guide is a great place to start.
