As we gear up for a new semester, how can we ensure our planned collaborative activities and related student teamwork will actually work? A high-impact practice, collaboration deepens student learning and helps cultivate the kind of relevant professional competencies, like critical thinking and collaborative problem-solving, that Dede and Richards (2020) identify as essential for 21st-century working life. In theory, our students will be able to draw on these skills long after they have forgotten the particular details of our courses. But collaboration is challenging, and many students arrive in our classrooms with little practical idea of how to work effectively with their classmates. In hybrid courses, where face time is limited, that’s a real challenge. We can’t simply walk our students through whatever team issues might arise like we can in a fully in-person course that meets two or three times each week. But if we take a page from folklore, we can function as our students’ magical helpers and guide them through the mystical forest of collaboration without using time we don’t have. Three kinds of multimodal content can help. Here’s how each works and why, after experimenting with the three for several years, I think one works best.
