Today, I am sharing with you one of my biggest teaching fears - group work. Group work is something I avoid like the plague if I can. However, this quarter is all about being open and I imagine that I am not the only person terrified of group work.
With that in mind, I decided to try a small group project in my American Government class. I also decided to talk to a few of my favorite communications faculty for suggestions on how to make it not so scary.
So here, in the first of a series (I hope) is an interview with Debra Waddell. Debra is a part time faculty at Cascadia, Shoreline, Edmonds Lake Washington and Walla Walla. She teaches in every format, including several online communications classes. We sat on my deck last Sunday and chatted about the scary aspects of group work and how to avoid it. I think I can sum it up by saying plan for conflict.
Online Group Work Interview with Debra Waddell (about 20 minutes)
I have not tried posting audio in a blog before. I've uploaded the file to my Google Drive and am sharing out the file. It's a little clumsy, it won't stream, you'll need to download the file. If this link doesn't work for you, let me know.
In the interview, Debra references a great team contract format initiated by Cascadia instructor Danielle Powell, in the reference section below.
Resources
Danielle Powell's team contract (Thanks Danielle!) (As always, if you decided to make use of any shared resources, be sure to give credit where credit is due!)
Thanks for the recorded interview! I wanted to share what I have done in my classes. Each week, there is Community Discussion Board. I explain this in detail to them at the beginning, that this forum is for them to ask questions, share anything pertaining to the topic that week or about photography, give advice to each other and ask for any clarification. This forum appears every week and I might have another very focused discussion forum with a particular objective. However, the community forum is a free flow of engagement the students love and use. I tell them my email is for private issues and anything other than that goes on the community board so they can help each other, as their question is certainty going to help the other students. I have found many great comments, sharing, and alot of students helping each other! I don't get many emails at all! I check the community forum and will add my comments when needed, mostly writing positive comments about their involvement with each other.
ReplyDeleteThe above comment is by Kathleen Chambers, did not mean to make it anon!
DeleteOne more thing, I have found it a challenge working with teams as well. I have found in Angel it is much easier than Blackboard, as Blackboard makes grading difficult and is not intuitive. So my hesitation has been the LMS! Luckily, I use Angel for my class. Having said that, I am learning how to work with BB. I am also wondering when there will be some extremely creative way to deal with discussions online. I have taken courses and I find 60 posts or more are very overwhelming. Canvas and D2L have the audio and video capacity to embed short voice messages in the discussion boards which I am applauding! Not only for the time saver, (instead of writing responses) but for the human touch!
ReplyDelete