UP Teaching & Learning Community Blog

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Blending Collaborative Learning and Learning Strategies to Enhance Online Engagement

Expand your teaching toolkit for both online and face-to-face courses

In my last entry, I explained how principles of facilitating peer-assisted learning (PAL) groups in the Learning Commons can support our own thinking as we design courses and learning plans. This blog entry is a continuation of this discussion. In the Learning Commons, designing PAL groups goes beyond the basic structure and facilitation strategies that I outlined last time. Collaborative learning techniques (CLTs) and learning strategies to two other essential components that our PAL facilitators weave into their group sessions with students in NRS 325, MTH 141, and PHY 204. As you read this blog entry, imagine how you might incorporate CLTs and learning strategies into your own online (and, eventually, face-to-face) sessions with students.

Collaborative Learning Techniques (CLTs)

Peer-assisted learning (PAL) is a derivation of Supplemental Instruction (SI), and the collaborative learning techniques that I outline below are from the standard SI training. Here’s the list that we use in our training of UP’s PAL facilitators

  • Group Discussion is what it sounds like. We all use this, but the following strategies provide alternatives to this tried and true CLT.
  • Clusters are breakout groups that many of you are already using in Zoom or Teams. In the pre-pandemic days, we used clusters for group work in classrooms.
  • Turn to a Partner is a CLT what many have long used in face-to-face instruction. Students turn to a partner to work on a task. In our remote context, we can just have pairs of students work in breakout rooms.
  • Think / Pair / Share is different that Turn to a Partner in that we allow time for individual students to process material or work on a task alone. With Zoom, we can send students to individual rooms before bringing them back and putting them in pair breakout rooms. While this has extra moving parts, the solo rooms do allow students to think alone first, where as they may be tempted just to start talking with a partner if we just put them in pairs and ask them to think alone first and then talk.
  • Individual Presentation involves groups in which the individual members present something to the group in a round-robin fashion. In our PAL sessions, we use this rarely since it can become a one-way reporting out. To be more effective, the students need to know to take notes, ask questions, and provide feedback to individual presenters.
  • Assigned Discussion Leader works best when the breakout group members are far along in their learning so that they can discuss in depth. The discussion leader will also benefit from having time to prepare, say overnight or between class sessions. Also, having some community norms around discussion in groups can invigorate the group discussions.
  • Jigsaw is a classic group learning activity in which a topic or problem is divided into parts. The class is divided into groups to work on their assigned parts. Then they come back together to share their parts of the whole. This then can spark questions and further discussion.
  • Group Survey can be used to gather students’ positions, opinions, prior knowledge, or predictions. As faculty, we can use polling platforms like MS Forms or Poll Everywhere (both available to UP faculty). After polls are taken, other CLTs can be used to engage students in group work around the responses. Group Survey can also be used as an opener to see where students stand vis-à-vis the topic of the day or to close a class meeting to assess how their thinking is changing.

In our PAL facilitator trainings and debriefings, we encourage our peer PAL facilitators to explore each of the above CLTs and not to rely on just one or two. The most popular are Group Discussion and Clusters, but all can be used to advance student learning.

Collaborative learning techniques provide us instructors with structures for student engagement. They provide students with spaces for peer interaction. Given the results of the recent survey of UP students, we know that many want more interaction in their remote classes. By adding the above CLTs to your teaching toolkits, you will likely be able to facilitate that peer interaction around that material that you want students to learn durably.

Learning Strategies

While CLTs provide a format for social learning, learning strategies provide structured processes for learning. For our PAL facilitators, knowledge of these strategies helps them to plan their sessions efficiently. They have a grab bag of strategies to try out in any session. As they explore these learning strategies by using them, they become more aware of how and when to use them.

From the learner’s perspective, learning strategies are behaviors and actions one takes to learn more effectively; they can support motivation and completion. From our perspective as instructors, learning strategies are activities that support learning, social interaction, and involvement with difficult material. For example:

  • Matrices have become popular among many in this era of remote teaching and learning, especially since we can use collaborative document tools like Google Docs, and we can effectively use matrices with the ClustersCLT. In breakout groups, the students work together to fill out part of a table or matrix in a shared Google Doc. The work to do this involves discussion, recall, revisiting and comparing notes, and asking questions. Different clusters (breakout groups) can work on different parts of the matrix which can be part of a jigsaw approach, or they can work developing their own responses to the same matrix which will then allow you to have them compare their responses.
Example of the matrices learning strategy used in a Group Discussion CLT
Example of the matrices learning strategy used in a Group Discussion CLT during a study strategies workshop in November 2020
  • Verbal Volleyball can be played in a whole group and works best after students have gained some familiarity with the concepts. The instructor asks a student to explain a concept, idea, or issue covered in class and then to give another student a different concept, idea, or issue which that student will then explain. The process goes on until the students can go no further. Repeats are not allowed. As the instructor, you can then pose questions and request students to use their resources to revisit concepts needing further work. Verbal Volleyball makes for a good opener or closer to online class sessions, but keep in mind that the students need some familiarity with the material.

The Learning Commons’ PAL facilitators have dozens of learning strategies at their disposal, and we keep adding more as we find or create them. We also use an app called SI Cards and Session Planner that offers a wide array of learning strategies for SI and PAL sessions.

The shift to remote teaching and learning has given us the opportunity to revisit how we support student learning, as we have done with the PAL facilitation program in the Learning Commons. As you consider lesson planning for the rest of the semester and plans for the spring, collaborative learning techniques and learning strategies can be part of your instructor’s toolkit for student success. If you would like to discuss any of the topics and approaches of my last two blog entries, please do feel free to contact me at white@up.edu, give me a ring on MS Teams, or leave a reply at the bottom of this blog entry.

Jeffrey White directs the Learning Commons at UP, where he collaborates with others to supervise and support over 60 tutors, writing assistants, and PAL facilitators. He also teaches courses in the Department of International Languages and Cultures.

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“…and I was happy not to finish what I had intended.”

Last week, Lars Larson challenged us to integrate interleaving into our courses, basing his proposal on principles found in Brown, Roediger, and McDaniel’s Make it Stick (2014). One simple approach to interleaving is to bridge the introduction of material over two classes while also working on a different topic or concept. Although I know to do this, I sometimes fall for trying to package an important concept into one class session. This occurred last week in my Maximizing Study Abroad course. I had planned to have students explain and apply material from a book chapter on Milton Bennett’s Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity (DMIS) through discussion and in-class group work. Since we had just returned from spring break, I also used the beginning of the hour for students to recall what they had been learning prior to the break. This took a bit longer than I expected, as did our group work, and by the end of the hour, we were not done with my lesson plan. As I gathered my things at the end of class, I realized how happy I was not to have finished my intended plan. I could now interleave the material by having students read over the week for the next topic on making cultural inferences and then guiding students the next week to recall Bennett’s DMIS and continue committing it more deeply to memory through elaboration and application.

But why interleave learning? The authors of Make it Stick cite studies that indicate the benefits of interleaving for retrieval of past learned material and developing the ability to discriminate between different kinds of concepts and problems. Interleaving our subject matter also supports effortful learning and what they refer to as “distributed practice” or learning that is spaced out over time. The opposite of distributed practice is massed practice, which includes trying to learn material in one block, as in my original lesson plan, or through cramming, which unfortunately is likely to happen on campus for some students in about a month. James Lang (2016) also discusses interleaving in his recent Small Teaching and cites supporting research findings from math and language learning. He suggests models for shifting from blocked class sessions to interleaved class sessions. Again, the key to interleaving is not finishing a topic or concept before introducing another. For example (Lang, 2016, p. 79):

From Blocked Class Sessions

Monday: Topic A, Problem-Solving Session

Wednesday: Topic B, Problem-Solving Session

Friday: Topic C, Problem-Solving Session, Quiz

To Interleaved Class Sessions

Monday: Topic A, Problem-Solving Session, Topic B

Wednesday: Topic B, Problem-Solving Session, Topic C

Friday: Topic C, Problem-Solving Session, Review or Quiz

Lang notes that students may perceive interleaved learning as moving more slowly, but he cites both laboratory and classroom research that indicates better retention and recall among learners who practice interleaving. Applying interleaving also promotes relating concepts to each other in the classroom and through assessments.

Like the authors of Make it Stick, Lang also promotes frequent low-stakes quizzing and other retrieval practices, such as the following quick classroom assessment techniques:

  • Opening questions that prompt students to remind us what we were working on in the last class session;
  • Closing activities such as a minute paper in which student list key take-aways or their own questions from the day;
  • Closing a session through a short quiz or solving a final problem;
  • Eliciting responses that connect the new topic to some other aspect of the course material.

By engaging students in retrieval practice within an interleaved classroom, we will increase the likelihood of their ability to recall and discriminate concepts, connections, and applications of the material we teach into the future.

As we embrace Lars’ challenge from last week, we can use some of the above approaches to integrate interleaving into your course and lesson plans. For example, when I meet with my Maximizing Study Abroad class next, we will (1) finish some work on Bennett’s intercultural sensitivity scale, (2) interleave it with questioning how it might connect to stages of cultural adjustment, and then (3) move on to the first stage of learning about making cultural inferences.

If you would like to discuss interleaving teaching and learning, please feel free to contact me at white@up.edu.

Jeffrey White is an instructor of German and the Learning Commons administrator in Buckley Center 163. To discuss with Jeffrey how your students can practice and enhance their learning the Learning Commons, contact him at x7141.

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To Whom do you Refer? The People on UP’s Counseling Staff

Orrico hall, home of U P health and counseling servicesWhen we on the academic side of the University have concerns about the mental health of our students, one of our obvious resources is the staff of the UP Health and Counseling Center. Whether we get there via Early Alert or through a direct contact, it can be helpful for faculty and academic staff to know who might help us figure out how to help our students – and who is talking to the students who avail themselves of UP services.

For this 2017-2018 academic year there are two new psychologists on staff, along with several returning psychologists providing counseling services (and each year there are also graduate practicum counselors in training). The new psychologists this year are both somewhat on the administrative side of things, though with extensive backgrounds providing counseling services.

Carol Dell-Oliver, Ph.D., is the new Director of the Health and Counseling Center, taking over from Margaret Trout. Carol sent the following introduction for faculty:

Carol Dell-Oliver, Ph.D. is the new Director of the Health and Counseling Center. She has been a licensed clinical psychologist for 24 years, with extensive experience in university settings and private practice. Her areas of specialization include anxiety, depression, disaster recovery, and the assessment and treatment of trauma-related disorders. Her goals for the Health and Counseling Center are to assess UP’s current mental health, substance abuse and suicide efforts and to create a strategic plan to implement improvements. Other goals include expanding services and outreach efforts in health and wellness promotion, and improving students’ access to services to reach diverse and/or underserved populations.

Eliot Altschul, Ph.D., is the new Assistant Director for Counseling and Training, taking over from Will Meek. Eliot sent the following introduction for faculty:

I obtained my Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the California School of Professional Psychology in Berkeley/SF Bay Area. I trained in the Counseling Centers at Stanford and Boston Universities. Since my training I have held positions at Emory University as the Group Coordinator, George Washington University as a Staff Psychologist and Supervisor, Humboldt State University as their Director of Training, and at Clark College as the Director.  I also have extensive experience in other levels of care including inpatient, residential, day treatment and private practice.

I utilize an integrated approach to my therapeutic work with students including practical and solution-oriented, as well as brief psychodynamic and object relations modalities. I help student/clients understand, experience and manage their own emotional states.  I often approach this from a lens of mindfulness, in terms of self-observation without judgment, and self-compassion.  Some of my areas of interest and expertise include identity development, sexuality and spirituality.

The returning members of the counseling staff include Rikki Cor, Psy.D., Hannah Hoeflich, Psy.D., and Staci Wade-Hernandez, Psy.D.. They wanted to be introduced collectively, and sent the following for faculty:

University of Portland Health and Counseling Center is staffed by four full-time licensed psychologists and two pre-doctoral trainees who hold master’s degrees in psychology. The Counseling Center staff are committed to providing an emotionally safe, accessible, and compassionate space for all University of Portland students. We strive to integrate multicultural humility and competence into our everyday functioning, firmly planted in the belief that all people have dignity and are deserving of respect. Clinicians utilize empathy, open-mindedness, and the therapeutic relationship to increase insight and decrease emotional distress. All consultation and therapy meetings are confidential and student health information cannot be shared without written permission. Mental health counseling is available at no cost to all students enrolled full time at the University of Portland. We provide short-term counseling services for students experiencing a range of concerns. First visits are considered a consultation. These appointments last about 20 minutes and are focused on immediate student concerns and to develop a plan. Due to our model, it is possible that an off-campus referral for services will be made.

/* Featured Image by Andrew Guest

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A Brief Intro to Teaching Circles

Mark Meckler, Associate Professor of Strategy and Leadership in the Pamplin School of Business, created a 3-minute slide show that provides an overview of the structure and possibilities of faculty-created Teaching Circles. There is no single method for doing Teaching Circles “correctly,” but this slideshow gives you insights into the qualities of effective Teaching Circles. Clicking on this link will take you to a Powerpoint file that you can watch by clicking on the Slideshow view  Teaching Circles ppt.  Alternatively, clicking on this link will take you to a movie file that has the same slides Teaching Circles movie.