Using collaborative learning in the large lecture classroom enables an instructor to answer the challenging questions most frequently associated with enrollments that exceed 30-40 students:
- How to encourage attendance?
- How to avoid anonymity?
- How to facilitate participation and close attention to class activities?
- How to enable discussion?
In a typical 100 person large-lecture course, I have placed students into 4-person learning teams and created 5 houses of 5 teams. Based upon research I have conducted, I assign students into diverse learning groups, as those settings almost always encourage greater intellectual and emotional growth. When students are placed in homogenous teams, they have a tendency to confirm each other's biases. In order to identify diverse learning teams, I ask students to fill out a survey that includes a wide range of background information. Here is an example of a Course Diagnostic that I use to place students into learning teams: Download Course Diagnostic ENGL 282 Spring 2003
Because of the confidential nature of the data students submit, I do not allow my Graduate Teaching Assistant or Team Coaches to participate in the formation of the student learning teams.
Once the teams have been established, they are divided up into houses. Each house is managed by a Team Coach, a former undergraduate student of mine who has performed well academically and has indicated an interest in learning more about pedagogy and classroom management. Team coaches are responsible for taking attendance, answering general questions during work sessions, and collecting/analyzing weekly reflection reports from their teams. Team coaches earn 3 hours of fieldwork credit (almost every major at WMU has a fieldwork course) in return for helping out during the course. I also have a graduate Teaching Assistant -- usually a student who hopes to teach the subject matter in a smaller class setting at a later point in his or her career. The Teaching Assistant manages the Team Coaches and resolves most team conflicts.
Here is a schema of the structure for a typical large lecture section that uses collaborative learning:
At the beginning of the semester, participants in each team learn about roles and begin practicing them during in-class exercises. The teams create a performance contract that includes provisions regarding attendance, participation, and attitude. The contract has to be approved by the instructor, and it may include penalties ranging from extra work to dismissal from the team. Every week, the team turns in a reflection regarding its learning outcomes and performance. Team coaches evaluate their teams and compare their notes to the information contained in the weekly reflection reports. Any discrepancies or concerns are expressed to the Graduate Teaching Assistant, who shares those with the Instructor. Here are sample documents for this part of the process:
Download Team Roles Document for ENGL 2000
Download Team Performance Contract ENGL 3820
Download Weekly Team Coach Report ENGL 2000
Download ENGL 2000 Team Coach Guide
Because students are held accountable for their performance by their peers, there tends to be some initial "storming" as team members try out team roles and learn to trust each other. During this "storming" phase, Team Coaches are encouraged to report any problems immediately to the Graduate Teaching Assistant, who will often meet with as many as 5 or 6 teams during the class period, helping to resolve conflicts.
Many of the assignments in the course are designed to test students' collaborative discussion and writing skills. These assignments help to "shrink" the large lecture classroom, as students engage on discussion and report their findings when the class comes back together to engage in discussion of a text or concept. Teams engage in two types of exercises: daily worksheets to encourage discussion of the assigned reading and semester-long projects that result in some sort of public engagement (poster presentations; blog development, etc.).
It has been my experience that students who participate in a large lecture collaborative learning classroom are more likely to attend class, to participate actively, and to indicate on their evaluations that the structure of the course contributed substantially to their educational experience.
