integrating teamwork and active learning into the classroom

Creating Developmental Good Luck

Integrating teamwork and active learning into the classroom Barbara Oakley, PhD, PEProfessor of Engineering, Oakland University, Rochester, MichiganVisiting Scholar, University of California, San Diego

What is the difference:

A television show that teaches about a given subjectA classroom that teaches about a given subject

Form teams of 4 or 5

Is one better than the other?

By Wags05 at English Wikipedia - Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=439065152

Why you should use active and collaborative approaches to teachingHow to do active learning and informal teamwork in classHow to do more formal team activities inside and outside classIntegrating activities into the new flipped environment.

What well cover

The initial knowledge state of college physics studentsIbrahim Abou Halloun and David Hestenes, American Journal of Physics, November, 1985.

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Basic knowledge of physicsThe accompanying figure shows a hollow circular tube laid on a frictionless, horizontal table. You are looking down at the table. A ball is shot into end A of the tube to leave the other end B at high speed.

Which of the paths below will the ball follow when it leaves the tube?

5Described the design and validation of a test to assess the basic knowledge of first year physics students.

FindingsConventional instruction induces only a small change in initial common-sense beliefs. (13% improvement in scores).Basic knowledge gain under conventional instruction is essentially independent of the professor.

6Public Domain, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=14253933

Interactive-engagement versus traditional methods: A six-thousand-student survey of mechanics test data for introductory physics coursesRichard R. HakeAmerican Journal of Physics, January 1998Compared results on the Halloun-Hestenes Mechanics Diagnostic Test for traditional versus collaborative learning methods.

72084 students taught through traditional methods achieved an average gain* of 23%.4458 students taught through cooperative learning methods achieved an average gain of 48%.

*Gain is defined as actual average gain to the maximum possible average gain.

Failure rates inSTEM

Freeman, S, et al. "Active learning increases student performance in science, engineering, and mathematics." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, 111, 23 (2014): 8410-5.

33.8%Traditional

21.8%Active

Source: https://ourworldindata.org/intelligence/#correlates-determinants-consequences8

A most unusual award winnerJudith Rich Harris, George A Miller Award for top psychological scholarly work (APA)

The Nurture AssumptionPeer groups!

9Be sure to use my Texas accent example.

Judith Rich Harris is an unusual recipient of an APA scholarly award, given that shes neither a psychologist nor an association member. But even more ironic is the fact that the award is named after the same man who kicked her out of Harvard Universitys graduate psychology program 38 years ago. 'I dont think youll ever have a recipient of the George A. Miller Award who was happier to receive it,' Harris chuckled upon receiving the honor named after the renowned experimental psychologist. Harris, of Middletown, N.J., accepted the award during APAs 1998 Annual Convention in San Francisco, for a 1995 journal article that said research has never proven that parents are the biggest influence on their childrens personalities. APAs Div. 1 (General) bestows the honor on scholars whose work deftly integrates various subfields of psychology.

You should expect about 60-80 faculty to come, mostly health science and science faculty. The format that seems to work best is a 2- 21/2 hour workshop in the morning open to all faculty. We are used to doing things and learning during these workshops. Since large classes are a concern for some faculty, please talk about how teams can function in large classes. Then I would like to schedule you to meet with the faculty who are actually doing groups and teams. We had a group of faculty who met all last year to discuss how to teach in groups and read the relevant literature (which is where we discovered your work). They would want to meet with you and perhaps consult with you on their difficult situations.

Turning attention activates diffuse mode

Why? (Cont.)

11Have them form into teams. Do the who woke up earliest this morning question. Then have them come up with as many team-related activities they can think of in two minutes. Bring candy bar!

Why should you use active and collaborative learning?Compared to students taught traditionally, students taught with small group learning:Achieve higher gradesLearn at a deeper levelRetain information longerLess likely to drop from a programAcquire greater communication skillsGain a better understanding of their professional environment

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Using Active Learning and Informal Teamwork in Class


Active LearningGive the students something to do: Answer a questionSketch a flow chart or diagram or plot, outline a problem solutionSolve all or part of a problemCarry out all or part of a formula derivationPredict a system responseInterpret an observation or an experimental resultBrainstormCome up with a question

14All team-related activities are fundamentally forms of active learning for students

Turn it into a team activityTell them to work :In pairs.In groups of three or four.Give them from ten seconds to two minutes.Turn them loose! Key pointcall on an individual or two before asking for open-ended responses

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Think-Pair-ShareStudents work on something individually and then pair up to compare and improve their responses before you call on them.

16You may also occasionally do a think-pair-share, in which the students work on something individually and then pairup to compare and improve their responses before you call on them.As little as five minutes of that sort of thing in a 50-minuteclass session can produce a major boost in learning. For starters,it wakes students up: we have seen some of them elbowingtheir sleeping neighbors when an active learning task wasassigned. Academically weak students get the benefit of beingtutored by stronger classmates, and stronger students getthe deep understanding that comes from teaching somethingto someone else. Students who successfully complete a taskown the knowledge in a way they never would from justwatching a lecturer do it. Students who are not successful are

BenefitsAs little as five minutes of this sort of thing in a 50-minute lecture can produce major boosts in learning:An elbow in the side for sleeping students.Weak students are tutored by stronger students.Stronger students get the deep learning that comes with practice.Poor performers are put on notice.Students OWN the material.

17You may also occasionally do a think-pair-share, in which the students work on something individually and then pairup to compare and improve their responses before you call on them. As little as five minutes of that sort of thing in a 50-minuteclass session can produce a major boost in learning. For starters, it wakes students up: we have seen some of them elbowingtheir sleeping neighbors when an active learning task was assigned. Academically weak students get the benefit of beingtutored by stronger classmates, and stronger students get the deep understanding that comes from teaching somethingto someone else. Students who successfully complete a task own the knowledge in a way they never would from justwatching a lecturer do it. Students who are not successful are put on notice that they dont know something they may needto know, so when the answer is provided shortly afterwards they are likely to pay attention in a way they never do intraditional lectures.

You can still cover all the material you normally coverPut material in class handouts that include gaps.Announce you will not cover details in handouts in classbut it could show up on tests.

18But there is no need to shorten the syllabus. Suppose that instead of saying every word and writing every statement and drawing every diagram and deriving every equation in class, you were to put a lot of the material in class handouts that include gapsskipped steps in derivations, axes with no curves showingand exercises with spaces left for responses. "Estimate the solution of this problem." "If you increase the temperature, how would you expect the product yield to vary? Why?" "Draw the free-body diagram." "Fill in the missing steps between Eqs. (4) and (5)." "List three reasons why an experimentally determined value of this variable might differ from the one predicted by the formula just derived." Further suppose you announce that you will not go over most of the details in the handouts in class but any of itespecially the gaps and questionscould show up on the test. Most of the students will then actually read the handoutsat least after the first test, when they discover that you meant it.This strategy accomplishes several things. By eliminating the need to say and write and draw everything in class, you buy yourself many classroom hours that can be devoted to the things that make learning happen spending more time on conceptually difficult material, giving more examples, asking and answering questions, and implementing active learning. You can fill in some of the gaps in the handouts in class; get the students to fill in others in active learning exercises; and leave some for them to work out for themselves before the test. The students learn more (we learn by doing, not by watching and listening), the classes are more lively, daily attendance increases, and the syllabus is safe.

Use partially completed notes fill them in by hand

What about large classes?Large classes (75 or more students) are a fact of life.The larger the class, the more important it is to use active learning. Key point: Students are more comfortable and confident in groups of 3 than groups of 300.

20Large classes (75 students or more) are a fact of life in the first year at most universities, and they are also common at higher levels at some institutions. The larger the class, the more essential it is to use active learning. In a traditional lecture class with 15 students, it is not too difficult to get almost everyone actively involved in asking and answering questions and participating in discussions of course material. In a class with 40 students it is extremely difficult to do so, and in a class of 75 or more it is virtually impossible. Few students have the self-confidence to risk looking foolish by asking or answering questions in front of a large number of classmates, and the traditional pep talks proclaiming that there are no dumb questions and that wrong answers are also valuable generally have little effect. On the other hand, when a class is periodically given something to do in groups of two or three, the risk of embarrassment is minimalthe only real difference between a class of 20 and a class of 200 is that the latter class is noisier during activities.

Specific techniques for large classesStop activity after prescribed time.Call on individual students or teams to state results.Overload calling on the back of the classroom.AVOID calling for volunteers.

21A key to making active learning work in large classes is to stop the activity after the prescribed time interval and call on individual students or teams to state their results. (When we do this, we tend to overload on the back of the classroom, where many students go to avoid the instructor's attention. In our classes the students quickly learn that they can run but they can't hide!) If you only call for volunteers to provide responses after a group exercise, many students will not participate in the activity, knowing that sooner or later another student or the instructor will supply the answer. If they know that any of them could be called on, the same fear of embarrassment that keeps them from volunteering responses in the whole class will prompt most of them to work with the small group so that they will be ready with something if they are picked.

TAPPSTAPPS = Thinking-Aloud Pair Problem SolvingArguably the most powerful classroom instructional technique for promoting understanding.

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TAPPS explained Have students work in pairs through a worked-out problem solution or derivation in the text or a handout.One explains the problem step-by-step to the other.The other questions unclear statements and or gives hints.Periodically stop students and call on for explanations.Have them periodically reverse roles.

23You might occasionally run a TAPPS (thinking-aloud pair problem solving) exercise, arguably the mostpowerful classroom instructional technique for promoting understanding.[3] Have the students work in pairs through acomplex derivation or worked-out problem solution in the text or on a handout, with one of them explaining the solutionstep-by-step and the other questioning anything unclear and giving hints when necessary. Periodically stop them, callon several of them for explanations, provide your own when necessary, and have the students reverse roles in their pairsand proceed from a common starting point. It may take most or all of a class period to work through the entire solution,but the students will end with a depth of understanding they would be unlikely to get any other way.back, and you might occasionally run a TAPPS (thinking-aloud pair problem solving) exercise, arguably the mostpowerful classroom instructional technique for promoting understanding.[3] Have the students work in pairs through acomplex derivation or worked-out problem solution in the text or on a handout, with one of them explaining the solutionstep-by-step and the other questioning anything unclear and giving hints when necessary. Periodically stop them, callon several of them for explanations, provide your own when necessary, and have the students reverse roles in their pairsand proceed from a common starting point. It may take most or all of a class period to work through the entire solution,but the students will end with a depth of understanding they would be unlikely to get any other way.

But how can I cover all the material?Typical course has 40 contact hours.You can cover 200 textbook pages a month.What is your objective?

24People acquire knowledge and develop skills only through repeated practice and feedback, not by watching and listening to someone else showing and telling them what to do.

40 contact hours in typical course. If all you do is lecture, you might as well hand out lecture notes and let the students find a more productive way of using their time.The only way a skill is developed is practicewhether that skill is skiing, writing, solving thermodynamics problems, or thinking critically.You could easily cover a 1,000 page textbook during a semester by just putting all the material on PowerPoint and flashing the slides. The question is, what is your objective? If it is simply to present all of the prescribed course material, regardless of how much or little of it the students actually absorb, then you should not use active learning exercisesthey do indeed slow things down. However, if the objective relates to what the students learn as opposed to what you present, then the goal should not be to cover the syllabus but to uncover the most important parts of it.People acquire knowledge and develop skills only through repeated practice and feedback, not by watching and listening to someone else showing and telling them what to do.2 In lecture classes, most students are neither practicing nor receiving feedback on anything. They are just sitting theresometimes watching and listening to the lecture, sometimes thinking of other things, sometimes daydreaming or sleeping. Most of them would learn just as much if the classes were cancelled and they were simply given the lecture notes and homework assignments and perhaps review sessions before the tests.

Making your lectures worthwhilePunctuate your lectures with active exercises.Energizes students. Focuses students attention on the most important points.Increased learning compensates for slight loss in material covered in class.

25Its a much different story if lectures are punctuated with brief active exercises that call on studentsworking individually or in small teamsto answer questions, begin problem solutions, fill in missing steps in derivations, brainstorm, formulate questions about material just presented, summarize, or do anything else that they may subsequently be asked to do in homework and on tests.3 The exercises energize the students (sometimes literally waking them up), direct their focus to the most important points in the lecture, and increase their subsequent concentration when the lecture continues. They give the students practice in the methods and skills the course is intended to teach them and immediate feedback on their efforts, thus meeting the criteria for learning to occur. Even if some material were dropped from the course syllabus to make way for the exercises, the increased learning would more than compensate for the loss.

Excellent for flipped classes. Give a one page handout with enough problems or questions to be done in half the class period. In the other half of the class period, give a test.Problem-based learning

And what you do teach in class can have more impact.Your in-class time is reduced

Online is highly competitiveSilicon ValleyHollywoodAcademiaPeople love it.

From Northwestern University Archives, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grPZLbOrvw4

Growth of MOOCs

Source: Class Central https://www.class-central.com/report/moocs-2015-stats/

MOOCs are your competition. Like it or not

Two non-problemsThe worry that some students will refuse to participate under any circumstance.The worry that the noise level during the activity will make it difficult to regain control of the class.

32Instructors who have never used active learning in a large class usually envision two problems. They worry that some students will refuse to participate under any circumstances and that the noise level during the activity will make it difficult to regain control of the class.In our experience, more than 90% of the students in a class routinely participate in active learning exercises after the first few, in which they feel awkward and unsure about what they are supposed to do, and the usual involvement is closer to 100%. Nevertheless, it disturbs instructors to see even one student sitting with arms crossed, pointedly refusing to participate, and the instructors often take such observations as evidence that the method is failing. Thats the wrong way to look at it. Suppose a full 10% of your students sit on their hands during an active learning exercise. This means that 90% of your students are engaged in thinking about what you want them to think about and trying to apply the concepts you have been teaching, so that the odds are 9 to 1 in your favor. In a typical traditional lecture, the percentage of the class actively engaged in thinking about the lecture content at any given time, let alone trying to apply it, is generally very low. Even if it is as high as 10%, which is unlikely, the odds are 9 to 1 against you. No instructional methodlecturing, active learning, multimedia tutorials, or anything elseis guaranteed to reach every student. As an instructor, the best you can do is go with the odds.It is true that in a large class the noise level can make it more difficult to bring the students attention back to you, which makes it important to establish a signal (e.g. a buzzer, whistle, or handclap) for them to finish their sentence and stop the discussion. After the first few exercises, we have never had to wait for more than 10 seconds for the room to quiet down, even with 400 people there. Besides, if you are teaching a class in which the students are so involved in answering your questions or working out your problems that you have trouble getting them to stop, there are far worse problems you could have.

Comments from a studentAllows the students to talk openly during classthis provides for a bit of distraction, but most students didnt abuse it. Because of that, the atmosphere of the class was not as stringent. Being more relaxed in the classroom can be conductive to learning.

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Other advantagesYoull realize what students getand what they dont get.Youre not just their professor anymore. Youre also their coach.

34And its kind of hard to dislike the coach. Make a point of sitting and working with the troublemakers. In fact, before class, its often a good strategy to come early and sit with these types of students. Theyll be shocked. And you yourself may be surprised to find these students are real people. Even if students dont initially care about your class, they will often end up caring if you care about THEM.

More formal teamwork inside and outside class


Key ruleInstructors must form the teams:Allows those most at risk of dropping out (new students, weak students) to form social bonds without it being a popularity contest.Reduces cheating.Puts the instructor in control.Improves later chances for students to get jobs.

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Landing a jobThe Strength of Weak Ties, Mark Granovetter, American Sociological Review.The manuscript should not be published for an endless series of reasons that immediately come to mind.

37Three years later, submitted to American Journal of Sociology, May 1973.Now recognized as one of the most influential and most cited sociology papers ever written.

Granovetter interviewed a working class neighborhood to find how people networkuse their social connections to land a new job. He interviewed dozens of managerial and professional workers, asking them who helped them find their current job. Was it a friend? He kept getting the same reply: No , it was not a friend. It was just an acquaintance. This reminded Granovetter of the classic chemistry lesson demonstrating how weak hydrogen bonds hold huge water molecules together. That eventually inspired his first research paper. Granovetter proposed something that sounds preposterous at first: When it comes to finding a job, getting news, launching a restaurnat, or spreading the latest fad, our weak social ties are more important than our cherished strong friendships. That person tends to hang with a lot of people who are in touch with one anotherrun in the same crowd. Acquaintances DONT run in the same crowdthey open new opportunities. From the book Linked, by Barabasi.

Steps to forming teams (1)Count off.Warn about no team switching.

38Tell them that 3 member teams can be just as good as 4 member teamsless worry about finding common times. Some people will come late, you can put them in a 3 person team. Watch out for people who have suspiciously identical schedulestheyre trying to be put on the same team. Often they are beside each other, which is why you need to shuffle.

Steps to forming teams (2)Team Expectations Assignment:Unites team with a common set of realistic expectations. Serves as a quasi-legal document.Due back in one week (just keep it on file).

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Steps to forming teams (3)Coping with Hitchhikers and Couch Potatoes assignment.

Have students write a small reflective essay.

40Have audience read the handout. Then share/discuss what they thought was the main point.

Empowering studentsMost instructors are unaware of how easy it is to be fooled.Giving students the right to leave a name off an assignment is crucial.Dont allow students to fire a student or leave a team on their own.Allowing students to perform peer grading can be very helpful.

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Peer rating of team members100 Excellent87.5 Very good75 Satisfactory62.5 Ordinary 50 Marginal

37.5 Deficient25 Unsatisfactory12.5 Superficial0 No showHave students evaluate mid-semester and discuss (dont turn in)Students re-evaluate at the end of the semester

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Using peer ratingsthe Autorating systemDetermine group project gradeConvert individual verbal ratings to numbers.Enter numerical ratings onto a spreadsheet.

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Individual project grade = (team grade) X (adjustment factor)

44Use TAPPS here.

Other helpful techniquesHand out the Evaluation of Progress toward Effective Team Functioning sheet about six weeks into the semester.Sermonize occasionally.Run crisis clinics as needed.

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Crisis Clinics

46Actually Run a ten minute crisis clinic. Then explain: Run periodic 10-minute crisis clinics. A quick scan of the results from the Evaluation of Progresstoward Effective Team Functioning form can provide clues about which problems might be worthdiscussing in these sessions. In a clinic, raise a specific issue, such as the hitchhiker, and put the studentsin groups to brainstorm different strategies that might be used to deal with it. Any strategy isfair game in these brainstormsgood ones, bad ones, even illegal ones (the frustration and latent hostility implied by some of the illegal responses can be eye-openers for the hitchhikers). You may also throw in a suggestion or two. List the ideas on the board and have the groups decide on the best first response, the best second response if the first response doesnt get the desired results, and the best last-resort response. Collect and list these responses, and then begin or resume the regular class.

The students will leave with excellent strategies that they generated themselves, and the hitchhikers will be put on notice that they could be in trouble if they dont shape up. One or two weeks later, you might take up the overly dominant team member (or whoever the troublemaker du jour might be) in a similar exercise. Students often have strong inhibitions against speaking out about problems, or they may simply wish to avoid unpleasantness. The crisis clinics provide a relatively comfortable forum for bringing problems up, and they clearly convey the message that the students have both the responsibility and the means to deal with the problems themselves, as opposed to either ignoring them or looking to the instructor to solve them. In our experience, roughly one group in ten has problems severe enough to compel team members to initiate discussionswith the instructor. Most of those cases involve either a hitchhiker or a good student who feelsusually rightly) that he or she is doing most of the work. Most of these problems are resolved through active listening, and very rarely they end with a student either quitting or being fired.We have observed that when these techniques and those described in the next section are implemented, some problem students drop the class earlyperhaps out of an awareness that they cannot slide through the system in ways that may have worked for them before. Most of those who stay in the course become more responsible once they realize that their grade is likely to be affected by their actions (or inactions). In a small number of cases, the seeds of personal responsibility only take root after the worst has happened. One of us has had the gratifying experience of having a former student appearing several years after being fired and thanking us for the wake-up call, which apparently made a difference in his life.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bulls_Ishikawa,_Okinawa_2007.jpg

Reasonable percentagesIf homework is only group activity10-20% of grade.If an additional project is involved, another 10-20% may be added, totally 20-40%.If entire course is project-basedas much as 80%. Perfectly acceptable to have team assignment grades not count if test grades arent considered to be passing.

47Be sure to put that last on the syllabus.

The team from HadesIve got a terrible team in my coursetheir constantly arguing and complaining about one another. Is teamwork failing, or am I?Neither! No instructional method comes with a 100% guarantee that it will always work well for all students.

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Reality checkIf you have 10 teams in your classMost are functioning well.Most students are learning as much or more than they did when you taught traditionally.You have one dysfunctional team.

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CongratulationsThats good teaching!

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integrating teamwork and active learning into the classroom

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