Requiring Collaboration

What are some student-centered approaches or techniques that are based on or require collaboration?

 * Understand small group dynamics and group students accordingly: "Put talkative students in groups of three and less talkative students in groups of four or five.  Stimulate a better exchange of ideas by putting shy students in groups of three rather than in pairs. Sometimes have two students talk while a third listens and takes notes, then have the third provide feedback at the end of the conversation." (Jones, 2007)
 * To ensure that each group member is contributing, consider allocating roles. These might be combination of all or some of: timekeeper (when discussions or other tasks are timed); scribe (where someone has to write down the groups thoughts/conclusions; editor (who is responsible for the accuracy of the group's written work); task master (someone whose specific job is to keep the group focused on the task in hand); and summariser (who periodically sums up where the group is in its discussions).
 * FOR MIDDLE SCHOOL AND HIGH SCHOOL AGE STUDENTS: This large group collaboration helps students safely assert, clarify, and possibly even change, their personal opinions on discussion topics, especially controversial ones. It can be a helpful pre-writing exercise for a persuasive essay in which an argument and a counterargument must be presented. It is called Barometer and involves students lining themselves up according to where they stand on a particular issue, "Strongly Agree," "Strongly Disagree" or somewhere in the middle. For instructions visit: https://www.facinghistory.org/for-educators/educator-resources/teaching-strategies/barometer-taking-stand-contro
 * Think-Pair-Share -  the idea here being that the teacher poses a challenging or open-ended question to the students. The teacher then gives the students a minute to consider their own answer, after which time the teacher then pairs off the students so that they can discuss the question and their answers together in pairs. After a few minutes of discussion time, the can either ask for student responses or take a class vote to determine the answer. Through this process students have an opportunity to learn from one another. They get to see what they know and don’t know through sharing with a partner. Also some of the stigma of “being wrong” can be alleviated because they’ve only shared their responses from the start with a partner, rather than in front of the whole class.
 * Round table Discussion/Brainstorming - in this method students are placed into groups after the teacher has lectured and asked an open-ended question. The group then passes around a single sheet of paper where each student is asked to write down what they think the answer is, while saying the answer out loud as well. This activity gives students a chance to think together, to express their ideas, and to be inter-dependent upon one another as their is only one sheet of paper.
 * On line collaboration can really add to the learning experience. This wiki is an example of it. Small groups and even whole classes can use wikis and the like to collaborate on projects together. Here's a blog with some good ideas in this regard: http://www.schrockguide.net/online-student-collaboration.html.
 * Collaboration does not have to be limited to being within your classroom. Using teachers' own connections, it may be possible to set up video links with classrooms in other schools (even in other countries) studying either the same topic as your students or perhaps a complimentary one. This can be very helpful in providing different perspectives.
 * Another way to foster collaboration is to put your class in groups with the strong and weak students evenly distributed and give them real-life problems to solve. (May not even be on subject) It forces the group to work together and the students tend to be more engaged because they don't deem it as learning instead they see it as fun.
 * Also, you can give students different steps in the directions so they have to communicate and order the directions before they start.

Sources:

Jones, Leo. The Student Centered Classroom. 2007. Cambridge University Press. Retrieved from http://www.cambridge.org/other_files/downloads/esl/booklets/Jones-Student-Centered.pdf

National Institute for Science Education. (2015) Think-Pair-Share. Doing Collaborative Learning. Retrieved from http://www.wcer.wisc.edu/archive/cl1/CL/doingcl/thinkps.htm

National Institute for Science Education. (2015) Roundtable/Brainstorming. Doing Collaborative Learning. Retrieved from http://www.wcer.wisc.edu/archive/cl1/CL/doingcl/brain.htm