Designing
Collaborative Learning Activities,
Assignments, and Assessments:
Practical Tips for the Classroom
Jane Lister-Reis
North Seattle Community College
jreis@sccd.ctc.edu
?
Why Collaboration?
What do we know of its
potential for learning?
Isn’t being a talented individual enough?
Sandy Koufax played with the
Dodgers from 1955-66.
He was perhaps the only
major-league pitcher whose
fastball could be heard to
hum. Opposing batters,
instead of talking and joking
around in the dugout, would
sit quietly and listen for
Koufax’s fastball to hum.
Koufax struck out 2,396
batters between 1955 and
1966.
What did
Koufax need
in order to be
successful?
A catcher able to catch his
fast ball.
“Only as part of a team could Koufax achieve
greatness. In baseball and in the classroom, it
takes a team effort. Extraordinary achievement
comes more often from cooperative groups than
from isolated individuals competing with each other
or working alone.”
-- David Johnson, Roger Johnson
Assessing Students in Groups: Promoting Group Responsibility and
Individual Accountability, Corwin Press, 2004
“[Effective learning teams] help individual
members of the team better understand the
material, and the team becomes capable of solving
very challenging and complex problems that are
well beyond the capability of the best student in
the class working alone.”
-- L. Dee Fink
Beyond Small Groups: Harnessing the Extraordinary Power
of Learning Teams
This workshop is about student
seminars and how they create a
unique and powerful way for your
students to engage in learning
challenging ideas and complex
ideas through a relational and
collaborative inquiry process.
What is a Seminar?
“Seminar is a long-established term in education,
yet it is ambiguous and covers a variety of
circumstances. Three common seminars are:
(1) the graduate style seminar in which
students present formal papers to their peers
and receive questions and criticism in response,
(2) the Socratic seminar in which a teacher
leads her students to a preordained conclusion
through carefully formulated questions and the
deft art of conversation management, and
What is a Seminar?
(3) the open-ended seminar to which
students bring their own questions (about
some topic or reading) and in which, through
conversation and inquiry, they address some
of these questions” (Finkel, Teaching with
Your Mouth Shut).
Three Principles of an
Open-Ended Seminar
1. The purpose of the seminar is for the
students to deepen their understanding of
something they have already examined: a
book, a chapter, a problem, a case study, an
article, a film, a play, a lecture delivered
previously, or any potentially educational
experience from the recent past (e.g., lab,
fieldtrip, political event).
2. The outcome of the seminar must not be
predetermined; the seminar must really be
open-ended. The teacher will have hopes about
what will be learned, but must arrange things so
that genuine inquiry can take place. The
instructor also expects the students to make
discoveries surprising to her as well as to them.
3. A variety of roles are open to the teacher,
but he must eschew any role that turns his
primary work into Telling; the students must
be convinced that they will have to do the hard
work of inquiry (Finkel).
A Taste of a Seminar
Exercise: Read ‘What’s in a Seminar” by Jim
Harnish (NSCC). As you read, underline the
passages that interest/confuse/delight you. Once
you’ve finished, go back and prioritize what
you’ve underlined. Select one passage to
discuss. Quickly make some notes about what
you think the author is saying, its contextual
importance, and why it’s important to you.
Seminar Protocol: Take turns reading aloud
your identified passage, state what it means and
its relevance to you. Your group can ask open
ended questions that deepen and expand your
thinking.
Now that we understand the basic
concept of a seminar, how do we as
faculty set up a class learning
environment so that the open-ended
seminar becomes the signature
pedagogy for students to co-construct
new knowledge?
Faculty Responsibilities
• Decide on the central questions
(list in your syllabus).
• Select great
books/readings/issues or
problems that will challenge your
class and support a dialogic inquiry
process.
• Sequence the learning activities (readings,
writings, lectures, concept workshops, class
discussions) to flow with the seminars in terms of
learning difficulty.
• Determine when and what to assess – create
self, peer and faculty assessments along the way
that will allow you and your students to
understand where their strengths and challenges
are in relationship to their learning.
• Create a meaningful capstone experience that
integrates their learning experience.
Conceptual Challenges
of Seminars
Students need to be able to understand:
• Concept of interdependence (what I do affects
whole)
• Importance of Balance (social and task)
• Self and Group Awareness (how did I do; how
did my group do?)
• Willingness to challenge their assumptions
about concepts and others (critical thinking)
• Willingness to be changed (transformative
learning experience)
Seminar Video
The Integrated Studies Committee at NSCC
created a video in order that students (and new
faculty) could more easily grasp complex ideas
within a student seminar:
http://www.scctv.net/original-programming/college-programs
(Scroll down to North programs; Click on "Seminar: A
Skill Everyone Can Learn")
Student Learning
Outcomes from Seminaring
• Critical and Reflective Thinking
• Introduction into Systems Thinking (concepts of
interdependence/self regulating/pattern emergence)
• Respect for & Understanding of the Need for
Differences
• Awareness of Authentic Voice (their own and others)
• Becoming a Self-Directed Learner
• Concept of being fully present
• New Relational Skills (Listening, Asking Questions)
• Collective Leadership and Group Facilitation Skills
• Development of a Real Love of Learning
Disciplinary Discussion
How might you use this pedagogy of
an open-ended student seminar in
your course?
Final Thoughts:
“Separating power from authority thus lies
at the heart of teaching with your mouth
shut. It is the key to the transfer of power
from the older generation to the younger.
It is the central distinction upon which the
development of democracy rests” (Finkel,
133).
Resources
Texts:
Teaching with Your Mouth Shut, Donald L. Finkel,
Boynton/Cook Publishers, 2000.
Handouts:
Handout plus URL:
http://facweb.northseattle.edu/jreis/New%20Faculty
%20Orientation%202009/