Teaching Innovation Studio: Structuring Successful Group Work

We are a group that meets regularly to form a community of practice to support each other in learning about and applying new and innovative practices in our teaching. At each Studio we discuss a selected topic related to college teaching. In these Studios, all participants share their own experiences, including strategies they have tried in the past or are interested in trying, brainstorm, and ask questions, with the hope that everyone can leave with new ideas and recommendations to apply in their courses.

We invite our faculty colleagues to join us for these conversations. We are particularly interested in finding additional people who are interested in joining our group on a regular basis, but all are also welcome to drop in for individual discussions.

In this studio our discussion will focus on ways that we can realize the benefits of collaborative learning by structuring group assignments so that they will be successful rather than a source of frustration for instructors and students. Aspects of assignment design that we will discuss include selecting tasks that are amenable to group work, segmenting assignments, individual accountability for group work, and how strategies can differ for assignments of varying length and complexity. Plan to share strategies (successful or unsuccessful) that you have tried in the past, and you are encouraged to bring copies of assignments or other materials that you have used to share with the group.

This event is part of the Faculty Enrichment Events calendar.