Lilly SoCal 2018 Plenary

I have a great job

Faculty ask questions about how to do something better and I get to go off into the literature and research, glean best practices and come back to faculty with the possibilities…we then hatch a plan together and I help them take it to their classroom

I sometimes sum up my job as a faculty developer as helping people take well thought out and executed pedagogical chances in the safest way possible

18 years ago….When I was new to the Engineering School…many faculty can to me seeking advice on how to improve their group/team work

I did my normal thing and dove into the literature for answers – to really understand how to make team work work!

My first wonderful discovery was the cooperative learning literature and writings of David and Roger Johnson….they have done some great work with Cooperative learning…how effective it is, ways to facilitate and design and make it better

And I found some answers that I shared with my faculty– we found ways to tweak what we were doing – things were definitely getting better – but still the odd group really struggled – we were better at managing it but not perfect at preventing it

A real watershed moment for me was reading the original TBL book for the first time in fall of 2003

It was like opening of wonderful Xmas gifts –  page after page of insights

It helped me understand why some activities naturally soar and other activities struggle

I was so excited by the book I bought some extra copies

[insert Pete and Tom story]

Now they won’t teach any other way…

It has set me on a quest to understand at a more fundamental level why things work the way they do…

So I am huge fan of team-based learning….but…and this is an important but

I shouldn’t be the only thing in my team work toolbox

We need to learn from all the teamwork traditions not just our favourite…they all have things to teach us

If the only tool in our toolbox is a hammer…every problem will likely start to look like a nail

Five Concrete Examples

I want to give some simple concrete teamwork ideas to take back to your own teaching…

I have gathered 5 of my favourite teamwork activity discoveries over the years…and these are a great place to start since you can sprinkle them over your existing teaching

Activities we can sprinkle over our existing courses

I common place for people to start injecting more activities into their teaching is Angelo & Cross’s wonderful Classroom Assessment Techniques….what I love about this book is almost recipe based describing how to design and facilitate each activity….and the activity range from simple turn to the person beside you to big complex group cooperative learning tasks like fishbowl debates and role plays.

The book has been recently nicely updated into Learning Assessment Technique by Barkley & Major

I want to share my favourite now….designed by one of my faculty members….this is just my favourite….check the book out and you can find that one that resonates for you…and try them in your own classroom

Concrete Example 1: Wheel of Motivation (Random Picker)

Nice for longer product reporting – without mind-numbing sequential reporting

[describe app, how they work, and where to get them]

Spin roulette wheel with team numbers – put phone on document camera – invite chosen team to front to share

The possibility of needing to publically report – motivates all teams to take activity seriously

Activity 1: Table Talk Selected Reporting

Consensus selection of top two questions….also write them on card

I am going to give you 4 minutes….to come up with the 2 top questions your table has…write them on the card….and when we come back together…I will spin the wheel of motivation….so be ready to share your table questions with everyone here today

Concrete Example 2: Scissors and Glue Stick for Writing Compilations – Sparrow and Sova-McCabe

Writing I think of as mostly an individual activity. You write your piece, pass it to the next writer or editor, but you are not often sitting at the keyboard with someone else writing together. When we assign a 5 section report to a team of 5….we wouldn’t be surprised when they divide it up…individual does their part and meet at the stapler when handing it in. Dividing it up is a reasonable ADULT learning behaviour.

I really like this activity developed by Sophie Sparrow and Margaret McCabe at Pierce Law School at the University of New Hampshire.

[Insert Sparrow/McCabe story] grad course angst

[Insert foundation engineering story]

Concrete Example 3: Student Peer Review of Writing – Linda Nilson Paper

Having students peer review each other’s work is an obvious way to help students get more timely feedback.

When we first think about peer review we often think of questions like:

But the trouble with these kinds of questions is we are asking students to be evaluators for something they might not be expert at. If I am a poor writer and you are a great writer – I could have trouble providing this kind of evaluation. But what Linda realized was we need to ask students to evaluate something they are more expert at. Each student is expert at being a reader/audience member at their specific level of competence.So questions like these can give poor writers opportunity to give valuable feedback to good writers.

This is all explained in the wonderful paper by Linda Nilson…15 years later and I am still forward this article to faculty many times each year

There is important clarity in Linda’s writing

There are now some really good online tools to structure these kinds of peer review processes. They are a fair amount of work to set-up, but once they are set…students are systematically guided through a creation phase, peer review others work, receiving peer feedback, reflection, and revision….this is automated enough that we now have significant writing component in a course with 1000 students.The teacher isn’t in the middle of feedback circle since feedback is student to student – which lets us scale up nicely.

The tool we are using at UBC is PeerScholar…we really like….I am sure there are others…but this works well for us….

Concrete Example 4: Getting Student to come to class prepared – power of Team Tests

Here we want to borrow something from the Team-Based Learning world. It is a simple, but powerful idea to get students to come to class prepared, having reviewed the preparation materials.

All it really is….is an individual MCQ test on the pre-readings followed by having teams take the same test together using these really cool scratch and win answers cards

[hold up IF-AT]

Students get together in their teams, discuss the question and when they arrive at a consensus answer…scratch of the opaque grey coat to see if their answer is right….as indicated by a small black star.

These cards are sooooo much fun….students love them….expect lots of noise, high fives and lots of learning.

We can imagine a conversation inside a team…what did you get for question 1……I got D….D….me too, D….Lets scratch off D

[team scratches off D…revealing star for correct answer….yeah]

What did you get for question 2…..B….C…C….B….C….hmmm

Why do you think it is C…Why do you think it is B….dicuss till a tentative consensus emerges….so we are going to scratch off C

[team scratches C….groans]

OK….should we talk about this more or just scratch off B?

Lets scratch B

[team scratches B….cheers]

Some interesting things here….team members might have different quality of preparation and these team tests can bring students up to a more similar level through the power of social learning. This is great because having teammates at very different levels can be quite toxic to teamwork.

There are also some good group norms that naturally evolve….

If I am the opinionated bully who is consistently wrong…the group will soon stop listening to me…conversely, if I am a quiet student sitting on the edge of the group and someone notices I always have the right answers….it is in the team interest to get me involved in the conversation.

This individual-team test pair is one part of TBL more extensive Readiness Assurance Process. We can borrow this test pairing and use it in our courses. There is considerably more educational power in the full TBL implementation…but we can borrow this one piece.

Let’s try these scratch cards….we will just do a 3 question team test in the interest of time.

First, go into the folder on your table…there is a one-page reading….I will give you 3-4 minutes to read, then we will do the team test using the scratch cards.

Activity 2: Team Test

• lilly_plenary_rap_reading_v0.9
• lilly_rap_questions_v0.4

Concrete Example 5: Using TBL’s 4S framework for better discussion questions

The reading for the last activity really gave away the punchline for this activity suggestion.

Another thing we can borrow from the TBL world. TBL ask discussion question in a somewhat non-intuitive way. We make sure the question is relevant to students (Significant question) that we have every team work with the same question so they care more about what other teams decide (Same question) and here comes the non-intuitive part – we constrain the possible choices (Specific choice) that let students easily report (maybe just hold up a coloured card) their decision and easily see contrasts between each others thinking (Simultaneous report).

What I have outlined with – Signiciant question, the Same question, required to make a Specific choice, then Simultaneous report – is TBLs powerful 4S framework.

An analogy might be a help here, to help you understand the dynamic that we are trying to create with TBL 4S questions.

TBL is like a courtroom jury.

Think of a courtroom jury that is required to do a deep analysis by sifting through large amounts of evidence, testimony, statements, and transcripts to come up with a “simple” looking decision: guilty or not guilty.

Imagine yourself on a jury as the foreperson; you rise and state your jury’s verdict, but another foreperson rises from a different jury team in the same courtroom and states a different verdict. You naturally want to talk to them; you naturally want to ask “why?” This public declaration and the “simple” comparability between decisions naturally induces everyone to ask the question “why”.

This analysis, decision making, public reporting, and public discourse comprise the heart of the TBL experience. The WHY question provides the instructional fuel to power insightful debates between student teams and gives everyone immediate and focused feedback on the quality of their thinking they used to arrive at their decision.

There is a great article from the National Teaching and Learning Forum by Gary Smith on an important first-day question to ask students in a learning-centered classroom.

My notes (gary_smith_orientation_idea) on how to use this article.

 

Activity 3: Voting with team cards

Try this mock 4S Team Task

You can introduce students to TBL with this mock Application Activity based on Gary Smith’s activity from the National Teaching and Learning Forum Newsletter article First-Day Questions for the Learner-Centered Classroom (NTLF newsletter, 2008).

The article asks the reader: “Thinking of what you want to get out of your college education and this course, which of the following is most important to you?”

1. Acquiring information (facts, principles, concepts)
2. Learning how to use information and knowledge in new situations
3. Developing life-long learning skills

The teachers will give time for intra-team discussion leading to a team decision. Then the teacher will pass out the TBL voting cards and ask the teams to simultaneously report by holding up the card that corresponds to their team’s decision. Then you can facilitate a full class discussion contrasting the various team decisions. This activity both shows the students the mechanics of the Application Activity process and clearly surfaces differing student beliefs on what good classroom learning should look like. There is a wonderful way to extend this activity (Smith, 2013). At the end of the activity, students are asked to revisit the items on the list and consider which of the items would be better achieved in class and which items could be achieved through individual study. They will quickly zero in on “acquiring information” as something they could do on their own. You can then revisit the format of TBL and show them that is exactly how TBL is structured, you acquire some information on your own and then come to class where we can work on higher order goals like application and life long learning skills.

References

Smith, G. (2008). First-Day Questions for the Learner-Centered Classroom. National Teaching and Learning Forum Newsletter. Retrieved from http://www.ntlf.com/ Smith, G. (2013, November)

Selling Active Learning to Faculty Requires a Student Purchase, Too. Session presented at 38th Annual POD Meeting, Pittsburgh, PA.

Creating Right Conditions for Teamwork

• Forming Teams Properly
• Making Students Accountable
• Ensuring students getting frequent and Specific feedback

Forming Teams

The first question is how to form teams? In a way that is effective and fair.

There are generally – 3 team formation strategies discussed in literature – Instructor selection, random selection, student or self-selection

The literature is really clear – if you need long-term, high-performance teams – you should likely use instructor selected…team formation like this is most often based on sorting students based the diverse skills and attributes every team will need to be successful. There are times with short, ad hoc kinds of activities where you won’t do this careful selection – but long term. Bigger teamwork…we should form the teams

When you announce that you will form teams – some students will not like this and make requests to form their own teams with their friends….don’t let them…this is a mistake don’t give in

You should have an eloquent well-researched response to this predictable student question.

My standard responses are….I decide to do after carefully reading the literature on team formation and teamwork. The literature was very clear to me that forming teams for you will generate better results. One of my favourite article I bumped into was in the journal of engineering education – Assigning Students to Groups for Engineering Design Projects: A comparison of 5 methods…it says the teacher should form the team…but why don’t you give it a read…and if you disagree with the findings…send me a note that in a scholarly way states your position…I will read it and consider your request…..

 

Accountability

Don’t have mechanisms in place to keep individual students accountable…teamwork can go sideways pretty fast

C student riding on A student’s coattails…will happen if the penalty is too small

If we look at the 5 concrete examples….different accountability measures can be a play

• Wheel of motivation – public accountability pressure
• Writing Compilations – ticket to class, attendance, peer evaluation
• Peer review – grades for completion, grades for feedback quality
• RAP – accountable to instructor and teammates, peer evaluation for even more accountability
• 4S – public accountability, peer evaluation for even more accountability

Peer evaluation most common tool to keep student accountable for their contributions to team/group work

It can work well when it is designed properly

It can not influence changes in behaviour when the penalties for not contributing are too small

Remember that C student riding on the coat tails of the A student….say peer evaluation can knock someone down a letter grade – as the C student, I might still get a B for you’re a work…that doesn’t seem fair

– must have sufficient teeth to truly reward those that contribute and adequately penalize those that don’t

Our peer evaluation system can have one student get near 100% on a team assignment…when another student might be getting a failing grade for the same assignment…enough teeth

 

Feedback

When it comes to feedback frequent and immediate is best and specific is most useful

This can be hard in large classes where the teacher is a scarce resource….and there is only so many hours in the day to mark assignments and give feedback

Golf Swing Story

What we can try to do here is design tasks in a way that students are giving other students feedback….design tasks so students get specific comparisons of their thinking and problem-solving processes quickly – the TBL 4S frameworks excels at this during that final report of your specific decision that is so easily contrastable to other teams publically declared decision

In the 5 concrete examples, there are a variety of ways that feedback is generated.

• Wheel of motivation – see others ideas, convergence of thinking
• Compilation – see others ideas, peer teaching, consensus building
• Peer review – focused feedback from reader/audience
• RAP – test angst, IF-AT
• 4S – feedback inside team building consensus, feedback during reporting discussion due to visible contrast in thinking

What is good here is it falls on the instructor to design great activities that generate feedback for students not try to find more hours in the day to give feedback to students

The best thing is student-to-student feedback is soooo scalable

Prepare for the Emotional Journey

The warning label – caution about friendly advice

Not will there be student resistance – but when, how much and how will you respond

Selling your rationales to students, not just a beginning of course…but throughout

It is important to periodically remind students about the value they are getting from the activities…one of my favourites comes from a friend at the University of Central New Mexico….after a few weeks of team-based learning activities….she reflects back to students what it might have looked like…had she lectured the materials….what they would have learned and taken away…students often come to realize they are learning more in spite of having a smaller stack of notes

So why would you do this if it might hurt?

Falling in Love with Teaching Again

This is why you do it!

 

 

Generated Table Talk Questions

I will over the next few weeks – build answers to these questions – you can find many of the answers by looking around this website.

Teams and how to form them

• What is the difference between a group and a team? What is a “team”?
• How should I form teams? (4)
• How to make teams in big classes?
• What is the ideal group size?

Teamwork Online

• How to do teamwork online? (2)

Engagement and Team Dynamics

• How do we ensure students are equally engaged? (3)
• How do we ensure students are getting an equal student experience?
• How do we get everyone involved?
• How do we help shy, introverted students?
• How do we work with fixed mindset students?
• How much should we emphasize teach teamwork skills?
• How do we train our students to effectively collaborate?
• How do we deal with conflict in teams?
• How do you determine roles in teams?
• How do you ensure effective group dynamics?
• How to fairly deal with slackers?
• What do you do with “social loafers”?
• How do you keep teams from being dysfunctional?
• How should we prepare students for group work?
• How do we manage the group perfectionist?

Effective Assessment Practices

• How do we effectively assess teamwork?
• How do you assess?
• How do we do Individual vs. Groups assessment of projects?
• How do we reassure students about individual vs. team grades?
• How do you fairly assess the work of teams?
• How do I get students to give honest peer evaluation?

Effective Facilitation

• How do we facilitate teamwork to help it be more effective?
• How do we keep groups on task?
• How can this work in large lecture halls?
• How much groupwork should be done each class?

Overcoming Resistance

• Why are some students so resistant?
• How do we overcome faculty poor experiences with other forms of group work?

Team-Based Learning

• In which disciplines is TBL most effective?