Experiences in Collaborative Learning
at the University of Rochester
– It’s all in the Shoes
Steve Manly
Department of Physics and Astronomy
University of Rochester
http://www.pas.rochester.edu/
thrilled
touched
honored
excited
How is innovative teaching like
buying/wearing new shoes?
PI question
a) Discomfort with the current
styles
b) Gotta get the fit right
c) The cost is prohibitive
d) No matter what you do, it’ll start
to stink when you get
comfortable with it
Get the right fit: shoes aren’t
good if they don’t fit.
Get the right fit: students get
upset if the basic fit isn’t
right.
Teaching is not a “one size fits all” profession.
 Gerry Wheeler’s (truth)(clarity) uncertainty principle
 flexibility for institutionalization
What is a “workshop” at UR?
Institutionalized study group
Small group size (5-12)
No stacking - mix of abilities
Meet 2 hours once a week
Work together through problem set designed by professor
Trained peer leader (undergraduate) who facilitates
Comfortable, non-evaluative atmosphere – some profs
give points for attendance, others don’t
Separate lectures/demo, labs, problem sets, help room, use PRS
A UR workshop is not…
Lecture
Homework
Recitation
A couple of references to some of the UR work:
E.Page, S.Manly, V. Roth, Student perception regarding the helpfulness of different types of physics
problems in a student-assisted learning environment at the University of Rochester, submitted to Am. J.
Phys. (still in review, email steven.manly@rochester.edu for a copy)
L. Tien, J. Kampmeier, and V. Roth, Implementation of a Peer-Led Team Learning instructional
approach in an undergraduate chemistry course, Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 39, 606-632
(2002).
We are not the first people down this path …
Fairly similar to Heller et al.’s Cooperative Group problem-solving strategy:
P. Heller, R. Keith, and S. Anderson, Teaching problem solving through cooperative grouping. Part 1:
group versus individual problem solving, Am. J. Phys., 60, 627-636 (1992).
P. Heller and M. Hallabaugh, Teaching problem solving through cooperative grouping. Part 2: designing
problems and structuring groups, Am. J. Phys., 60, 637-644 (1992).
Contains some elements similar to Laws’ Workshop Physics and Sokoloff
and Thorton’s Interactive Lecture Demonstrations:
P. Laws, Workshop Physics Activity Guide Modules, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 2002.
P. Laws and P. Schaffer, Tutorials in Introductory Physics, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 2002.
D. Sokoloff and R. Thornton, Using Interactive Lecture Demonstrations to create an active learning
environment, Phys. Teach. 35, 340-347 (1997).
Also very similar to Univ. Colorado’s Learning Assistant Model (Otero,
Pollock, Finkelstein, Iona) and the CER Peer-Led Team Learning (PLTL)
model:
The structure of the workshop problems
Mix of styles/types: Conceptual and analytical, simple and
complex, context-rich and straightforward
Structured for group exploration of the process of
solving problems and analyzing cases
Take advantage of group setting
Some hands-on and get-out-of-your-seat
exercises
M1
M2
What is a leader?
Facilitator, not a lecturer
Knowledgeable peer, not necessarily a major in
the given field
Undergraduate and graduate
(vertical integration!)
Leader Training
Faculty & Learning Specialist Partnership
1.5 hour leader training meeting once a week
with faculty member and a learning specialist
Quality control of the educational model and the content
 Explore how students learn, how teams work, how best to
facilitate the learning
 Review content for week’s workshops
 Communicate issues (good and bad) concerning rooms,
students, course
Undergraduates get 2 hours credit and pay
Graduate students have requirement to teach for at
least one year as part of degree (and get paid)
What do the students do in
workshop for 2 hours/week?
 Work on the week’s problems together as a group or in
small subgroups
 Come to closure together on how to approach the
problems (may be multiple approaches to discuss!)
ENGAGE
 Work through shared and individual questions and
misconceptions.
 Step back together and explore the process of
solving/thinking through the problems … metacognition
(thinking about thinking)
 Hopefully … have fun in a relaxed, non-evaluational
environment
Where is it done?
Biology
Chemistry
Biochemistry
Computer Science
Electrical Engineering
Economics
~25-30 faculty
Physics
Intro courses
and some core
major courses
Mathematics
Workshop Taskforce
Electrical
engineering
Chemistry
Cross-departmental, interdisciplinary group
Computer
science
Economics
Seek to solve common problems
Warner
School of
Education
Brainstorming sessions common
Seed group for other activities
Biology
Gang up on deans and chairs in fight for rooms
appropriate to collaborative learning, leader training
resources, and seed money for new courses/faculty
interested in trying model
Writing
program
Physics
Mathematics
Biochemistry
In 2005 ~120 workshop sections in ~10 courses
~1500 undergraduate students in a workshop course
A significant number of undergraduate students have
a workshop leader experience before graduation.
Many repeat.
Does it work?
By what measure …?
Student learning, retention, exam performance …
Improves faculty-student communication
Great experience for the leaders
Experience in group dynamics/team building
Happier students … students perceive it to be an attempt to help
them … hopefully they are actively engaged in learning
The initial attempt …
1999 P114 (non-physics and engineering science majors)
41 students randomly assigned to workshops
110 assigned to “typical” recitations
(All but two students volunteered for workshops)
B- or better 
Students attending >5 workshops  93%
Students attending recitations  63%
 Similar results in the following years – not split classes, but grade success
correlates strongly with attendance
 Admittedly, could do much more careful assessment work. Just confirming our
expectation based on what the PER and CER communities have established and
getting a little local data for convincing others in dept/univ that it works.
Students chime in: selected comments from course evaluations
What are major strengths of this course?
“Workshops” (58 times)
“Workshops good” or “useful” (46 times)
“The workshops and workshop leaders. If it weren’t for
workshop I wouldn’t know anything.”
“Workshops are an awesome teaching tool”
“The lectures do not seem to allow for information absorption. I
do all my learning in workshop.”
My personal favorite!
“This class is horrid. The workshops are good though.”
System “institutionalized” in physics at UR
 Talk to the incoming faculty members, explain model and system
and share assessment numbers
 Make workshop problems available to newbie profs
 Undergrad secretary now handles room scheduling issues that
arise frequently with model (appropriate rooms in short supply and
two-hour slots don’t fit registrar’s classroom schedule well)
 During initial semester, have incoming faculty member do joint
leader training with someone who has used the model (the
pedagogical half, not content part)
 Set up system so that financing is not an issue (in our case, grad
students lead 4 sections with time freed up from reduced homework
grading)
Happy surprises
 System is in the student culture – taking courses using workshops,
desire to lead workshops
 Serious experimentation with adopting some core components of
the model in advanced courses and non-science major courses.
 Workshops helped create a culture of faculty acceptance that it’s
“okay and even good” to try new things.
 Perhaps half of 26 faculty in physics have adopted some aspects
of the workshop model in classes.
A few of the struggles …
Photo by Sume on Flickr
 Workshop problem design
 Some graduate TA’s want to lecture instead of facilitate the workshops
 Typical college classrooms not suitable for workshops
 2-hour timeslots don’t fit college class scheduling
 Professors asking TA’s to cover four workshops AND grade all the
problem sets – led to perception that system was busting the bank
 Why do we need to spend so much effort training the TA’s? What is the
value of the “pedagogical/learning about learning” component? – Hard sell
for typical faculty member
 You teach students to “cheat”
 Non-uniformities in how different departments run/fund workshops
 Not enough support for the learning specialist resource
 Flexibility can lead to poor quality implementation
Institutionalization
Development
Assessment
Go hand-in-hand, but often work against each other
… keep in mind what you are trying to accomplish.
For example, sometimes assessment and quality control demand
aspects of model be frozen, which hurts ability to develop model
further or institutionalize.
When trying something new, think about
institutionalization from the start
 Where possible minimize the new money and
minimize changes to the current system
 Make as professor independent as possible
 Minimize newbie professor’s effort
 Acquire some assessment data to convince locals it
is worth doing – think hard about assessment vs.
flexibility and quality vs. flexibility
 Flexibility – educational innovation, like shoes, is not
“one size fits all”
Physics education research is not just for physics anymore
… (if it ever was). “Allies for innovation” can be found
outside of the physics dept.
Electrical
engineering
Chemistry
Economics
Computer
science
Warner
School of
Education
Biology
Biochemistry
Photo by Wokka on Flickr
Writing
program
Physics
Mathematics
Thank you!