Content Guidance for Students

While students themselves must interact with and process the content, they need guidance—for example (Reisetter & Boris, 2009; Sadik & Reisman, 2009):

• A chance to browse and see the organization of the lesson or module before tackling it
• Explicit expectations for what they have to learn how to do with the content
• A readable and understandable textbook
• Links to previous related lessons or materials
• Interactive visuals
• Access to relevant library materials
• Links to supplemental information available within a lesson or weekly folder rather than outside the folder
• Automated feedback in interactive practice sessions and quizzes to inform them of their progress

The following example illustrates the implementation of most of these strategies. For her nutrition course at Purdue University Fort Wayne, Linda Lolkus selected a quality textbook with interactive, visually rich publisher materials that provided automated feedback, followed by a discussion allowing for additional feedback. She aligned student learning activities with the textbook structure (Goodson, 2016b), as illustrated in one of the study guides:

• READ IT
  • Access and read Chapter 2 of your textbook.
  • Review the learning objectives for the chapter.
  • Review the Top Ten Points to Remember.
• SEE IT
  • Nutrition Animations
  • Review Overview of Digestion and Absorption.
• STUDY IT
  • Review Study Guide for Chapter 3.
• DO IT
  • NutriTools
  • Review Build a Sandwich then complete Build a Sandwich Assignment.
  • Review Digestion and Absorption then complete the Overview of Digestion and Absorption Assignment.
• DISCUSS IT
  • Complete Week 2A Probiotics discussion.

Lolkus gave her students the choice of using the print textbook or the e-textbook of MyNutritionLab with MyDietAnalysis. She gave details on each edition (author, title, ISBN) and the option for purchasing only the access code for the lab if a student preferred to buy a used textbook. Both textbook formats were well designed to engage students in highly relevant active learning for achieving the course outcomes.

Other possible activities that foster content interaction include virtual labs and field trips, role playing, problem and project-based learning, debates, expert panels, structured discussions, writing assignments, and website building (Sorenson & Baylen, 2009). We list online resources for some of these activities in the “Web Resources for Content Interaction” section in this chapter.

The following conditions also support student interactions with content (Helms et al., 2011; Murray et al., 2013; Rourke & Lewer-Fletcher, 2016; Thurmond & Wambach, 2004).

• Ongoing interactions with the content such as just-in-time content for certain assignments or discussions rather than large chunks of content dumping
• Consistent course content structure, similarity of format for content presentation, and simple access to content
• Enough time for students to study the content before asking them to use it
• Explicit alignment of content with learning outcomes to make its purpose and value clear to students
• Opportunities for analysis and critical thinking about content, as in reflective journals and analyses of the blog postings of others
• Points or grades for recalling and using content, such as a graded quiz, discussion, or assignment

Content Presentation

Interactive content presentation encompasses various media representations, interactive technologies, carefully chosen social media, study aids, and connections with subject librarians. A straight presentation, no matter how beautiful, is not an interaction, and students can easily turn it off or skip it. Make your short lectures interactive by interspersing student activities and holding students accountable for completing them by showing or submitting some kind of work. When students must do research, try to embed a link to the library and the librarian for your specialty area so they have easy, convenient access to the materials they will need and scheduled appointments with the librarian.

Exhibit 6.3 shows the best strategies for content presentation based on the principles of learning from cognitive science (see also chapter 4).

Visuals and Media

Following the principles of learning from cognitive science (see chapter 4), present content and have students interact with it in more than one modality whenever appropriate. Students value and learn more from engaging, media-rich content presentations (Brewer & Brewer, 2015; Clark & Mayer, 2011). However, keep in mind that “media mix is not mind rich” (Mayer & Clark, 2013), and often less is more. Kilburn, Henckell, and Starrett (2016) provide examples of productive ways to use images and media:

• Short text posts, such as status updates (twitter.com, blogger.com, edublogs.org, classblogmeister.com)
• Long text messages, such as reports, research, papers, or reflections (mediawiki.org, facebook.com, wordpress.com)
• Photos, such as those of field trips, live research, or depictions of topics of study (flickr.com, instagram.com, facebook.com, pinterest.com)
• Video, such as short clips from a smartphone or camera (youtube.com, vimeo.com, vine.co, instagram.com)
• Audio, such as recordings of a talk, interview, or podcast (audioboom.com)
• Portfolios, such as those to display one’s work for future employers (linkedin.com)

Images enliven content and enhance immediate learning as well as long-term memory (Nilson, 2007). Create your own or use images from your library or free image collections such as these:

• EveryStockPhoto: http://www.everystockphoto.com/
• PublicDomainPictures: http://www.publicdomainpictures.net/
• Free Images: http://www.freeimages.co.uk/
• Free Images: http://www.freeimages.com/
• 4Free Photos: http://4freephotos.com/
• Free Digital Photos: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/
• Public Domain: http://www.public-domain-photos.com/
• Flckr Creative Commons: https://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/

Videos are also powerful learning tools when you give students opportunities to engage with them. Make your own videos, or pull them from your library or other sources such as YouTube (E. Moore, 2013). Here are some activities to make them active learning vehicles:

• Distribute questions for students to answer before, during, and after the viewing.
• Use a video to present a controversy for a discussion in which students must choose a position and explain their reasoning.
• Provide links to multiple videos, and have students compare their strengths and weaknesses or choose one for analysis.
• Send students on a web hunt for videos to support different points of view and post them with annotations on a class or group discussion forum.

Many course materials with dynamic student-content interactions are readily available. For example, college algebra courses use plenty of open educational resources (OERs) (Hilton, Gaudet, Clark, Robinson, & Wiley, 2013). (You can read about the OER university and their creators at https://oeru.org/.) These course materials include tutorials, quizzes, audio and video materials, images, lessons, textbooks, scenarios and case studies, software, games, animations, and maps—for example:

• Introductory Algebra: Open Educational Resource Project, Fall 2015: https://sccmath.wordpress.com /mat09x-fall-2015/
• MAT12x—Intermediate Algebra, Spring 2015, Open Educational Resource Project: https://sccmath.wordpress.com/mat12x-fall-2014/
• Arithmetic, Algebra, and Trigonometry, Open Educational Resource Materials: https://sccmath.wordpress.com/oers16/
• Internet Mathematics Assessment System (homework delivery and automatic grading): http://www.imathas.com/
• Arithmetic and Algebra Workbooks and Exams: https://sccmath.wordpress.com/

The last section of this chapter lists other OERs available for free in different disciplines.

Exhibit 6.4 furnishes guidelines for using visuals and media based on the principles of learning from cognitive science (see also chapter 4).

Content Misconceptions

Faulty mental models interfere with learning because, as “prior knowledge,” they cannot accommodate the correct content. Many instructors face the challenge of convincing students to give up their misconceptions and replace them with valid models. Exhibit 6.5 recommends ways to help them get past those faulty mental models in consonance with the principles of learning from cognitive science (see chapter 4).

Content Practice

Teaching involves not only presenting content but also giving students practice working with it. Some kinds of practice are more effective than others (Dunlosky, Rawson, Marsh, Nathan, & Willingham, 2013):

• Highly effective: practice testing and distributed (spaced) practice
• Moderately effective: elaborative interrogation, self-explanation, and interleaved practice
• Modestly effective: writing of summaries from text, highlighting or underlining the text while reading, associating key words and images as aids to remembering the text, rereading text

Incorporating the highly and moderately effective techniques into student-content interactions should advance student learning across platforms:

• Practice testing: Self-testing or taking practice tests over new material. Examples: Free-recall-based self-testing, flash cards, low-stakes pop quizzes, open- or closed-book retrieval of information, free or cued recall, short-answer questions, multiple-choice inference-based questions, and practice testing with feedback.
• Distributed (spaced) practice: Following a schedule of practice that spreads out study activities over time. Examples: Multiple repetitions after initial learning, opportunities to go beyond recall to deeper, conceptual levels of learning.
• Elaborative interrogation: Generating an explanation for why a stated fact or concept is valid. Examples: Why does it make sense that . . . ? Why is this true?
• Self-explanation: Explaining how new information is related to known information or explaining the steps taken during problem solving. Example: Explain what the sentence means to you. That is, what new information does the sentence contain for you? And how does it relate to what you already know?
• Interleaved practice: Following a schedule of practice that integrates previously learned material with new material (e.g., “old” problems with new ones) in a single study session; alternating practice on different kinds of problems.

In another type of practice, students reflect on and self-assess their learning. This has high impact when it prompts students to think critically about their learning process (Nilson, 2013). It also supports the student’s cognitive presence, which is so important in an online course (Luyegu, 2016). Since most students are unfamiliar with reflection, providing criteria for and models of what you expect will improve results. Use course tools such as journals and practice tests, or make productive use of microblogging tools such as Twitter, Jaikku, Tumblr, MySay, Hictu, and Edmodo (Kilburn et al., 2016).

Exhibit 6.6 lists ways to build effective practice into course activities based on the principles of learning from cognitive science (see chapter 4).

Content Discussions

While you may think of discussion forums as only a student-to-student interaction format—and they are indeed a major focus of the next section on student-student interaction—they can also engage students in the content. You just need to set up clear expectations from the beginning that students will have to supply sound evidence and reasoning for their claims (Brewer & Brewer, 2015; Gilbert & Dabbagh, 2005; Helms et al., 2011; Woods, 2016). You can guide them by asking the following types of questions to advance their thinking (MacKnight, 2000):

• Clarification: “Would you put it another way? “Would you give an example?”
• Query about initial question or topic: “What does this question assume?”
• Probe assumptions: “What could we assume instead?” “Why do you think the assumption holds here?”
• Probe reasons and evidence: “What are the reasons for your position?” “What is the evidence to support your claim?”
• Probe origin or source: “Where did you get this idea?” “What caused you to feel this way?”
• Probe implications and consequences: “If this is the case, what else must be true?” “What would be the effects?”
• Probe viewpoints or perspectives: “What is an alternative opinion?” “How would other groups of people respond? Why?” “What would someone who disagrees say?”

Content Assessments

Chapter 3 addressed assessment in depth, so our treatment of the topic here will be brief. Assessments should indeed be a learning experience for students in which they interact with the content. Of course, when you assess students’ mastery of content, you are really interested in assessing what students can do with it. This doing is built into the learning outcomes. Before you design a test or assignment, review the learning outcomes because they should dictate your assessments. As we stated in chapter 3, if you want your students to be able to do X, Y, and Z, assess their ability to do X, Y, and Z. Therefore, at least some of the questions and tasks in your assessments should require explanatory, inferential, analytical, evaluative, or creative thinking depending on the course outcomes.

Consider having students develop high-level thinking questions on a reading, video, or other content presentation. Teach them the higher-level cognitive operations, and show them model questions. When they know you might use them on a quiz or test or fashion them into an assignment or discussion prompt, they will be motivated to submit good questions.

Exhibit 6.7 lists best practices for effective assessments based on the principles of learning from cognitive science (see chapter 4).

Design one or two assignments to take advantage of available technology—for example (adapted from Kirsner, Teem, & Underwood, 2011; Pérez & Hurysz, 2011; Stowell, 2011; Yandell & Bailey, 2011):

• Invite students to review existing wikis, edit existing articles, post new ones to a wiki site, create wikis with the tool built into your LMS, or with Wikispaces: http://www.wikispaces.com/
• Create your own podcasts; then have students create their own podcasts using a free audio recorder and editor such as Audacity: https://sourceforge.net/projects/audacity/
• Submit podcasts to the iTunes directory for your course; also see Apple’s podcast resources: http://www.apple.com/podcasting
• Have students find relevant videos using search tools such as:
  • Google video: http://video.google.com/
  • YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/
• Select and assign screencasts (recordings of activities on computer screen, often with audio added) with tools such as these:
  • Screencast.com: http://www.screencast.com/
  • Mathcasts: http://www.mathcasts.org/
  • Create your own screencasts to highlight content, address concepts or problems, show demonstrations, or answer student questions. Students generally enjoy screencasts and find them helpful. Follow up with written assignments in which students explain what they learned from the screencasts.
• Have students create blogs on the content with tools such as these:
  • Blogger: http://www.blogger.com
  • Wordpress: http://www.wordpress.com
• Design an assignment, possibly a group assignment, that makes use of Google Docs, sheets, or slides: https://support.google.com/docs/answer/49008?hl=en
• Create and send students on a competitive knowledge hunt, scavenger hunt, treasure hunt, or webquest: http://www.webquest.org/
• Select a cluster of websites to prompt students to write an analysis or reflection on an issue related to the content.
• Have students use search engines to find and analyze blogs related to the content such as Find Blogs: http://www.findblogs.com/
• Assign simulations that assess students’ facility applying the content, such as PHET at University of Colorado: https://phet.colorado.edu/en/simulations/category/physics/
• Give digital photography or video assignments in which students can show their ability to apply or demonstrate the content, and store their photographs on sites such as Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/
• Have students design concept maps using tools such as these:
  • Inspiration: http://www.inspiration.com/Inspiration/ (modestly priced)
  • Bubbl.us: http://www.bubbl.us/ (free)
• Guide students in creating their personal websites that link to content-relevant sites with tools such as My Yahoo: https://my.yahoo.com

For more ideas, explore these:

• Edutools: http://www.edu-tools.info/
• Google tools: http://www.google.com/about/products/
• Google Hangouts: https://hangouts.google.com/
• teachweb2.0: http://teachweb2.wikispaces.com/

Web Resources for Content Interaction

Whether for content presentations, visuals, media, practice, or assignments, the web offers an amazing array of free digital teaching and learning resources. This section and Shank (2014) list those of exceptional value. The following types of resources are available:

• Course materials, including podcasts and videos of lectures
• Realistic demonstrations, animated or on video
• Performances (musical, dramatic, dance, and sport)
• Virtual science laboratories for hazardous or costly procedures and experiments
• Virtual field trips
• Case studies and problem-based learning problems
• Simulations for many subjects (e.g., business, management, history, sociology, urban planning, political science, environmental studies, and biology)
• Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) problems for students to solve
• Drills and exercises for remediation, practice, or review (e.g., mathematics, reading, and foreign languages)
• Teacher resources for K–12 and special education (presentations, exercises, and other activities)
• Tests of greater or lesser validity on temperament and personality, aptitudes, career preferences, political ideology, leadership style, team member style, and other human dimensions, many free
• Multimedia materials useful for research

Peer Review

Peer review can deepen learning and help students improve their work when you follow these recommendations (Ertmer et al., 2007):

• Explain how the peer review process works and why it is worthwhile.
• Give models and examples of effective feedback.
• Provide guidelines on how to give clear, constructive feedback, such as giving positive feedback first.
• Ensure that the peer review process is easy to use.

In chapter 3 we mentioned a few more guidelines for effective peer review and will elaborate here. Do not ask students to actually evaluate each other’s work the way we evaluate it. They are uncomfortable doing this as well as ill equipped because they have not yet acquired professional judgment. In addition, their attempts at evaluation tend to be too brief and disconnected from the author’s text. Rather, ask students to analyze or react to their peers’ work: to find the thesis statement, the evidence, and the main conclusion, or to identify the “strongest sentence,” a particularly persuasive piece of evidence, and a sentence or two that the reviewer had to read more than once to understand. The responses provide the author with the most useful information possible: how the reviewers received and experienced the piece of work. If they did not pick out the intended thesis statement or conclusion, the author then realizes the need to communicate more clearly (Nilson, 2003). At the same time, the author does not feel criticized or discredited.

Class Discussions

The purpose of discussion is to generate a fruitful, constructive exchange of different ideas and points of view, all backed by an argument or evidence and leading to a decision, judgment, recommendation, or solution. Therefore, the questions should be open-ended and have multiple respectable answers. To motivate sufficient student participation in an online discussion, Helms et al. (2011) suggest these strategies:

• Create unique topics across the course.
• Create topics relevant to assignments, such as discussing ideas for upcoming papers.
• Make it easy and clear for students to get into the discussion area and make their contributions.
• Make only some of the postings compulsory.
• Provide detailed instructions and exemplars of productive contributions.
• Develop and use clear, simple rubrics to grade the quality of contributions. One criterion should be posting contributions by your deadline.
• Facilitate the discussion to guide it, but avoid prominence.
• Show that you welcome open debate on any relevant contributions, even if they are controversial.
• Set up a system for responsible critique of contributions.
• For some discussions, require students to work together.

Here are some additional ways to get students to participate. Give them enough lead time to familiarize themselves with the content needed for the discussion. Ask them to give examples of concepts from their own experiences or examples from people they know. In this way, they add to the repertoire of examples. Give them a topic, and ask them to generate questions about it, requiring that no student duplicate any question already asked. Or assign only certain students to ask questions and others to answer. A student who asks a question becomes the leader of the discussion, offers resources such as web links, and at the end of the week gives the summary of the discussion (Sorensen & Baylen, 2011). Other students may send private e-mails with their personal reflections. Or require all students to answer at least one question with evidence added. Whether any of these strategies make sense depends on your purpose.

For one or more discussions, you can develop an expert panel for your course. Recruit a few colleagues and enroll them in a special discussion forum for two to three weeks (Bonk, 2013). Have students complete the appropriate readings, videos, or podcasts and discuss some of the issues in advance. Then have them prepare questions for the visiting experts. Afterward, post a summary of the important issues in the discussion. Veronika Ospina-Kammera used this technique in her course, Family Violence across the Lifespan (Goodson, 2004a). She posted six forums to capture important themes from a panel discussion for her students to review. Alternatively, you can have students identify and post such themes. Or set up the guest speakers’ visit for a single session and use a conferencing tool that allows recording of the session to make it available for students in future semesters (Bonk, 2013).

To sustain discussions, direct students’ attention as necessary to earlier relevant messages or current events (Ghadirian, Ayub, Bakar, & Hassanzadeh, 2016). In addition, encourage students to express themselves (Ross et al., 2013), summarize the discussion, and add knowledge resources to advance further reflection and learning (Hirumi, 2009; Liu et al., 2009). You may need to guide the interactions to better support problem solving and critical thinking (Kolloff, 2011). Without guidance and the right amount of intellectual challenge, students are more likely to engage in shallow discussions (Ramos & Yudko, 2008). But keep in mind that too much instructor presence will diminish student interactions.

To encourage deep learning, questions should require students to connect content and concepts beyond simple factual responses (Leflay & Groves, 2013). For example, Lolkus wanted her students to connect their discussion to the preparation activities she had assigned for the following week (Goodson, 2016b):

Week 2A Probiotics Discussion

• WHAT TO DO: Click the title link above (Week 2A Probiotics). Then click the Directions “Thread.” After selecting Directions, scroll down to view the directions. Click Reply and then post your answers to the discussion questions.
• DUE: No later than 11:59 PM July 8. Postings after the deadline will not be counted.

After following those directions, students would then see the following directions:

Week 2A Probiotics Directions Thread

Probiotics: Do You Need Them? Probiotics are live microorganisms, usually bacteria, mainly found in cultured dairy foods. Some research indicates that probiotics can have health benefits. However, the research is not conclusive, and some experts feel adding probiotics to the diet is ineffective at best and possibly harmful at worst. Should you seek out fortified yogurt or probiotic supplements, or can you get along fine without them? Read the arguments in the textbook, then consider the critical thinking questions and decide for yourself.

1. Which is the most compelling argument for taking probiotics?
2. Which is the most compelling reason not to take them?
3. Do you think we know enough about probiotics to recommend them to the public? (Adapted from Blake, 2012)

In the classroom you may or may not grade discussions, but giving some points for online posts recognizes student effort and contributions. You may not want to require and rely on just the number of postings and replies. Instead, craft guidelines to focus student attention on what quality means (Abawajy, 2012; Jeong, 2014; Ramos & Yudko, 2008). For example, Jeong (2004) integrates self-reflection by requiring students to label the type of messages they post and allowing them to return at any time to correct errors in their labels. Jeong uses these symbols:

• + = support for a claim or statement
• – = opposition to a claim or statement
• ARG# = one argument (only one)
• EXPL = additional support, clarification, elaboration
• BUT = question or challenge to logic, validity, accuracy, plausibility
• EVID = proof or evidence for validity of a claim, argument, or challenge

In deciding what to grade, consider whether an activity is something you would also grade in a face-to-face classroom. This can help determine whether to give just a few points or assign only “complete” or “incomplete” status, or whether an activity should be graded at all. For example, students’ recording of notes in a journal area makes sense, especially if dealing with potentially sensitive issues, but they may merit only a few points when completed each week.

An efficient way to grade students’ contributions to discussion is a participation portfolio (Division of Information Technology, University of Maryland Baltimore County, 2013), which has worked very well across the disciplines. At the beginning of the course, post a rubric defining quality contributions and replies; the web contains dozens of them. Students submit examples (specify how many) of their highest-quality contributions or replies every two to four weeks and “grade” them as a whole. Then accepting, raising, or lowering the grade and assessing student participation takes a fraction of the time that it would take to evaluate every post. (For more detailed instructions and a demonstration, go to http://doit.umbc.edu/itnm/managing-discussions/.)

To assess how far a discussion advances students’ understanding of the content, you can ask them to post at the end of a discussion their answers to reflective questions like these (Herman & Nilson, in press): What are your five major take-aways from the discussion? What new or deeper understanding of the content did you gain from the discussion? How would you evaluate the quality of the contributions in general? What about your contributions specifically?

Group Work

Group discussions and projects work best when you make explicit what actions you expect from the members and the whole group (Wang, Chen, & Anderson, 2014); students will follow where you lead them. For group discussions, tell students what you want them to do. Do you want them to illustrate or apply concepts? Do you want them to connect the material to local issues, use reasoning, apply rules, solve problems, or make logical, evidence-based decisions? Guide them in finding their way through your topics and questions.

A simple group discussion requires very little setup on your part. But when you assemble groups for projects, you need to plan group membership, define group roles, incorporate individual and group accountability measures, and develop a strategy for assigning individual grades (Hirumi, 2009; McLaren, 2009; Sorensen & Baylen, 2011), including a peer performance evaluation process (see chapter 3).

When setting up teams or groups, try to build heterogeneity into each group. Members can vary on academic background, relevant skills, or points of view depending on the group task. Consider giving meaningful names or having team members name themselves (such as Four Girls and a Guy, Insomniacs, Green Beans, Thinkers, Seekers). Give each team member a specific role to start out (such as leader, encourager, critic, summarizer, or reporter), and let the group rotate roles weekly. Allocate discussion space for the groups to develop their own rules for interaction and responsibilities. Make sure the project is challenging enough to demand synergy among the group members, and carefully specify the product you expect from them (Goodson, 2004a; Heo, Lim, & Kim, 2010).

For example, in her organizational leadership course at Purdue University Fort Wayne, Anna Gibson places her students in leadership roles in the discussion forums (Goodson, 2016a):

Discussion leaders need to sign up during Modules 01 and 02 and select the module they would like to lead for their team. The discussion topics for each module may be current leadership issues, required readings, or an assigned case study for the current module. Alternatively, the forum leader may choose the topic.

• Current leadership issues: Using current news, choose a leadership concept that is related to the topic covered during the current module. The discussion should be on a leader/manager and the current situation that appeared in the news (e.g., print, television, radio, internet, etc.) within the last six months. Sources you might draw from include, but are not limited to: Bloomberg Businessweek, The Economist, Fortune, Forbes, Black Enterprise, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, CNN, etc.
• Required Readings: Video(s) assignments or readings should be used to guide forum discussions.
• Case study: Case studies assigned in the current module should be used to guide forum discussions.
• Forum leader’s choice: If no case study is assigned for the module, the forum leader may choose the topic.
• Forum participant: When you are a discussion forum participant and someone else is the leader of your group, you are to contribute a minimum of one meaningful response within your assigned team (Skidmark, Smoove Move, or White Shadow) discussion forum.
  • The forum participation points will be assessed starting with Module 03, January 24, 2015, 8:01 p.m.
  • Forum discussions are the equivalent to classroom discussions and are a critical part of the online learning experience.
  • Active forum participation will be one measure of your ability to lead, effectively communicate, make and communicate sound decisions, and contribute to everyone’s learning.
  • The forum discussions close on Saturdays at 8:00 p.m. You will not be able to post additional discussions for the module.

Similarly, think about the purpose of team projects to decide how to set up the group space. If you want teams to work “in secret” to produce, for example, competing designs, give each group a private discussion space. If you want teams to share, set up threads in whole-class discussion forums. For example, you can have a forum titled “Research Ethics” and set up separate threads for each group but with the same purpose and directions:

Forum: Research Ethics

• Threads:
  • Team 1 Area
  • Team 2 Area
  • Team 3 Area
  • Team 4 Area

Or you could designate subtopics for each team—for example:

Forum: Research Ethics

• Threads:
  • Team 1 Tuskegee Case
  • Team 2 Nuremberg Code
  • Team 3 Thalidomide
  • Team 4 Stanley Milgram

As long as the task is challenging, you can give all kinds of assignments to groups, such as a complex case study analysis or a fuzzy problem to solve. Give all the groups the same case or problem, or distribute different ones across the groups. If you choose the latter, consider what layers of interaction will most benefit the class. Where do you want each group to record its summary or conclusions, and what kinds of review and comments do you want each group to give to the other? Or do you want them to follow a rotation, such as having team 4 review team 1, team 1 review team 2, team 2 review team 3, and team 3 review team 4? Such a rotation can shift for the next team assignment. Just make sure to align your choices with a learning outcome; do not have students review each other’s work just for the sake of review.

Another approach is to assign roles for different members to play in analyzing and interpreting a case, such as Investigator, Patient, Family Member of a Patient, or Institutional Review Board. In the case of an international economic conflict, each group member could represent a different country’s perspective. At the local level, as in a case about water pollution, the roles may include Commissioner, Parent of Ill Child, Grant Funding Agency, and so on. To prepare for their roles, individual students should conduct scholarly research reviews, provide citations, and include the reasoning for their perspectives. This strategy builds individual accountability within the group process.

In his Media Legalities Course at Florida State University, Pat Hadley privately made his own list of hot topics for possible team investigations, but he also used the first week of class to invite students to develop and submit their own lists. He then distributed a complete blended list from which students could choose initial research topics (Goodson, 2004b). Similarly, you may invite students to pose questions to investigate.

Discussion forums also can provide space for a well-structured debate that fosters critical analysis and evaluation. Set up opposing teams on an issue for which students individually conduct and write up research to send to their team members before they all discuss the issue and possible sides. You might require each student to submit three articles, an abstract for each, a correct citation, and a position statement on the issue. Then direct students to discuss their findings within their team, reach a consensus, and post their team’s position statement. This activity can occur over several weeks in preparation for final team debates. Here are sample directions that explain the activity’s purpose and grading criteria (Goodson, 2004b, p. 103):

Purpose: You will be one of three to five students in an assigned team. Individually and as a group, you are assigned a topic or issue of controversy. Your purpose is to prepare for online debates with your classmates. All of these controversy topics will be related to issues you have been preparing for the whole term, so you should be able to articulate positions and counter-positions using sound reasoning, logic, and evidence. . . .

Grading: Points will be awarded based on the quality of the presentations made this week and the following week. These are the criteria for quality:

Clearly stated position

• Argument or response, using sound reasoning
• Supporting evidence from readings or resources
• Analysis of issues that explains your position on the controversy
• Courteous and professional communication style
• Compliance with debate instructions

  You have individual and team responsibilities, and the quality of your work and participation as an individual and as a team member will influence your grade. You must complete a form evaluating the level of participation of each individual member.

For determining individual grades based on major projects, consider peer performance evaluations in which each group member assesses her or his own and the others’ contributions, distributes points among the members, or gives them ratings. Chapter 3 explains your options.

 REFERENCES

1. Abawajy, J. (2012). Analysis of asynchronous online discussion forums for collaborative learning. International Journal of Education and Learning, 1(2). Retrieved from http://www.sersc.org/journals/IJEL/vol1_no2/2.pdf
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