The POWARR™ of Student Collaboration
The following is a guest post from Dr. Marquita S. Blades. ©2020 Dr. Blades Consulting, LLC
You can watch her Video Session on this topic in The Elementary STEM Teachers Club Membership.
In about four months, the year 2020 will be over and we will be ushering in a new year. The onset of the year and anticipation for 2020 was filled with vision and promise. However, those precepts and ideas were soon replaced with a focus on a virus that catalyzed the development of a global pandemic.
Everything as we knew it, changed. Yet our quest to be innovative and equipped with skills and knowledge for the 21st century became a renewed call of urgency. This was evidenced by the challenges and struggles encountered as traditional schools and educators abruptly transitioned to a virtual teaching platform.
We are two decades into the 21st Century and it seems we are still searching for instruction that emphasizes 21st century skills. In 2019, EdSurge published an article by Suzie Boss, in which she wrote,
“The call for 21st-century learning dates back more than two decades, when blue-ribbon committees, policymakers, business leaders, and education experts began sounding the same alarm: Yesterday’s focus on memorization and rote learning would not prepare students for a fast-changing, increasingly automated, information-saturated world.”
So, how are we 20 years into the 21st century and seemingly not much further along when it comes to teaching 21st century skills? I think it futile to obsess over the “why aren’t we there yet?”, but rather, we should place our attention on the “how we can get there now.”
How can we now get up to speed with making sure that students are competent in the 4Cs of 21st century skills: Communication, Creativity, Critical Thinking, and Collaboration, especially, as we embark upon another academic year which could possibly be a full school year of distance/virtual/online learning?
This discussion will focus on collaboration, as our current virtual/distance/online learning circumstances seem to create a barrier to student collaboration. Digital/Virtual/Online learning raises questions about how students can effectively collaborate in STEM classes.
Further, what about those students who are only attending school virtually? How will they collaborate? Let’s walk this through…
On the surface, it makes sense that collaboration might be difficult considering the fact that students cannot assemble in groups as they traditionally would when working together. If students can’t assemble in groups, how can they share materials?
If students are not sharing materials, then are they actually collaborating? The answer is, yes – possibly!
Sharing materials does not guarantee student collaboration any more than seating students at the same table does. There can be four students sitting at the same table working on the same assignment, using the same materials, but working towards four different goals.
Most students take the WIFM (What’s In it For Me?) attitude towards group work. Most students participate in groups just enough to get what they want out of it – a finished assignment and hopefully, a good grade. This is not true student collaboration.
True collaboration requires students to need each other. True collaboration requires students to rely on each other’s contribution in order to be successful. True collaboration makes students want to communicate and work together for more than just a grade.
Here’s the thing though: most students don’t know how to collaborate effectively, so it’s up to us to create learning experiences that emphasize the skills needed to be an effective collaborator. In most groups, we encourage collaboration by assigning students roles.
Roles refer to the function or part played by a person in a particular situation. These roles typically include: Facilitator, Recorder, Reporter, Materials Manager, and Time Keeper. When placing students in collaborative groups, we have to make sure that we are not only defining each student’s role, but that we are also defining the responsibilities attached to that role. It is important to give action items for each role.
A responsibility is an action or calling that one is required to do as part of a job, role, or legal obligation. It is not enough to tell a student to keep the time. We have to guide them on what proper time-keeping looks like and sounds like. We have to define the responsibilities of a timekeeper and its significance to meeting expectations and completing the task.
Students need a clear understanding of what they are expected to do and how that impacts the rest of the group. If we focus on the roles and responsibilities, it really doesn’t matter where students are physically. They can still work together because one role relies on all of the others.
If we focus on the roles and responsibilities, we can have students effectively collaborate even if they are not in the same physical space or working with the same set of materials. Roles and responsibilities are more important to student collaboration than proximity and sharing materials.
Let’s look at those traditional roles and responsibilities of each.
If you are teaching using a problem-based learning model, then you can get even more specific with the roles and responsibilities. This will also promote the Science and Engineering Practices of the Next Generation Science Standards. Even if your state is not an NGSS state, the Science and Engineering Practices (SEPs) are just good for STEM instruction!
In my PD session for the Elementary STEM Teachers STEM Club, I walk through a full example of how to assign roles that are specific to the task at hand and how students can fill these roles virtually. I’ll give you a preview here.
Design Challenge:
You want to help other students in your school create a space in their homes that they can call their own. You plan to team up with some classmates and design an electrically-wired cardboard reading nook. Once you have the design perfected, you plan to share it with your school.
For this design challenge, I selected the roles in the chart below.
Students can fulfill these roles and responsibilities virtually through open communication. They can share ideas to lead each particular aspect of the project. This allows each student an opportunity to be the group “facilitator” at different times throughout the process.
Students will begin to see that in true collaboration there is no one job that is more important than others – which is something they tend to think with traditional collaborative group roles – even though we know and emphasize to them that all roles are critical to the group’s success. Students all contributing ideas to complete a project virtually?
…I think we’re on to something here. According to ISTE’s (International Society for Technology in Education) Student Standard #7 - Global Collaborator: Students use digital tools to broaden their perspectives and enrich their learning by collaborating with others and working effectively in teams locally and globally - collaborating digitally is not only possible, it is required!
These are skills that are vital to our students’ success in an ever-changing, fast-paced global society. Even before COVID hit, we were heading in this direction at a rapid pace. COVID only forced those who thought they could avoid it to get on board faster.
We can no longer see virtual and digital as a thing of the future. It is a thing of NOW! We may as well take this opportunity that COVID has presented us and use it to make sure that our students are grasping those 21st century skills, while it’s still the 21st century.
References
Boss, S. (2019, January 22) . It’s 2019. So why do 21st-century skills still matter. EdSurge. https://www.edsurge.com/news/2019-01-22-its-2019-so-why-do-21st-century-skills-still-matter
Collaborative Learning Guide. (n.d.) https://education.illinoisstate.edu/downloads/casei/collaborative_learning_guidea.pdf
Explore the Student Standards. (2020). ISTE Standards for Students. https://www.iste.org/standards/for-students
Want more Tips for Student Collaboration? Get access to the full training video when you join The STEM Teachers Club Membership!
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