collaborative learning

Using Collaborative Problem Solving to Improve Learning

Collaborative problem solving is an active learning strategy that promotes a richer understanding of course content, application, and significance than traditional lecture-based pedagogy. When students participate in collaborative problem solving, they not only learn course content, but they also practice critical process skills, including information

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How to Make Group Work Not Suck: Scaffolding the Collaborative Process through Agency and Self-Regulation

Employers love collaborators. Communities needs collaborators. Democracy requires collaboration.

Students hate collaboration.

And faculty feel . . . well . . . meh?

We know that collaboration is powerful. We know that it both provides students with skills they need and deepens their learning by exposing them to viewpoints different from their own. But

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Study Buddies: Learning with a Partner

Last week I happened onto something I’d written years ago about study buddies—two students who agree to study together in a course. I was describing a community college first-year seminar program that partnered students in the seminar and a general education course linked to it.

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Collaborative Note-Taking for Students

Here’s how collaborative notes typically work: on a rotating basis, students (usually one or two) take notes during class and then post them online. The collaborative notes are intended to support rather than replace individual note-taking, although they do provide absent students information about content

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Fostering Collaboration on Group Projects

How do we get students to collaborate on group projects? Too often their involvement feels forced, their engagement superficial, and their interest minimal. Students do not learn content or develop collaborative skills unless they connect with the task and one another.

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students working on group assignment

My Students Don’t Like Group Work

Students don’t always like working in groups. Ann Taylor, an associate professor of chemistry at Wabash College, had a class that was particularly vocal in their opposition. She asked for their top 10 reasons why students don’t want to work in groups and

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peer learning

The Benefits of Peer Learning

Three articles in the February issue of the Teaching Professor newsletter deal with peer learning—a large category that includes activities through which students learn from and with each other. Peer learning gets troublesome for many faculty due to the idea that students are teaching each

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