MODULE 7. Student cooperation and team-work in online and hybrid context
This unit will help you to:
- reflect on your own practice regarding facilitating group work and project work at school, cooperation of learners in online and hybrid context
- apply digital tools for facilitating project work and cooperation in online and hybrid context
- to reflect on your online and hybrid teaching practice
In this module you will find two units.
In each unit you will find a short introduction, a video and additional readings and other recommended resources.
At the end of each unit an assignment and a self-reflective questions will help you to apply the lessons to your teaching practice.
Have fun!
7.1. How learner collaboration challenges are faced by teachers during online and hybrid learning
Online, and especially hybrid education, when some learners attend a physical classroom and others concomitantly join the lessons online, has imposed several challenges in maintaining community and facilitating learner cooperation.
In this video we have collected good practices and testimonies of teachers who published their innovations and experiences on various trusted online platforms and communities in the past few years. The links to the sources cited are presented under the video. Once you watched the video you can explore the articles you are most interested in.
Community
A first condition of successful hybrid project work is having a whole-class community and strong relationships between those attending the lessons on-site, in the classroom, and the virtual participants of the class. Once this community has been established, project-based learning in small groups becomes possible in hybrid learning.
Key factors to such small group activities are:
- ensuring that all students—face-to-face and virtual—generate and share questions about things they’re interested in
- enhancing social connections between school- and home-based students by pairing a virtual student with an in-person student
- involving virtual students in planning activities, letting them articulate their needs and contribute with their ideas
- having a plan B for slow connectivity, making sure that students with slow connectivity have a place where they can present their artefacts even if they cannot join the synchronous video lesson.
Dynamic, collaborative learning strategies in an online or hybrid environment
To get students to tune back in, by adopting dynamic, collaborative learning strategies, that encourage them to get involved with the material and each other, some usual classroom methods can well be adapted to the online environment.
Some successful and inspiring examples of such adapted methods are presented in the video:
- the jigsaw technique,
- the brainwriting,
- the fishbowl method,
- the station rotation model,
- scaffolding.
Links to extra readings, suggested resources, videos
4 Strategies to Make Virtual Project-Based Learning Work.
Researchers and educators share how to successfully transfer project-based learning to virtual second- through fifth-grade science classrooms:
https://www.edutopia.org/article/4-strategies-make-virtual-pbl-work
How do I ensure students are engaged with each other and the content in a hybrid and/or remote learning environment?
How do I ensure students are engaged with each other and the content in a hybrid and/or remote learning environment?
In order to successfully engage students in a hybrid and/or remote learning environment, educators must provide certain conditions:
16 Hybrid Learning Tips by and for Teachers
At an unprecedented moment in education, teachers are on the front lines, adapting their work to online and hybrid formats without the benefit of time and resources to prepare. This is particularly challenging when students can join a live class either in person or remotely, a common form of hybrid learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. How do we design a great class when our students don’t share the same location?
https://globalonlineacademy.org/insights/articles/16-hybrid-learning-tips-by-and-for-teachers
7 Online Collaborative Learning Strategies to Keep Students Engaged While At Home
Seven collaborative learning strategies that can easily be adapted to or enhanced by online learning – they can be adapted for various levels of education.
https://www.eduflow.com/blog/online-collaborative-learning-strategies-to-keep-students-engaged-while-at-home (Links to an external site.)
Active Learning in Hybrid and Physically Distanced Classrooms
https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/2020/06/active-learning-in-hybrid-and-socially-distanced-classrooms (Links to an external site.)
The Concurrent Classroom: Using Blended Learning Models to Teach Students In-person and Online Simultaneously
https://catlintucker.com/2020/09/concurrent-classroom-blended-learning-models
Facilitating a story circle
https://ucanr.edu/sites/tfc/files/134496.pdf
Using Think-Pair-Share in online and hybrid environment
https://keepteaching.iu.edu/strategies/communicating-facilitating-activities/think-pair-share.html
Breakout group roles and expectations
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Qat-zbgweqDt7Hr0dK7KXv2pUX77K6YYspSHnidde1w/edit?rm=minimal#slide=id.p
Digital interactive notebook template
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1m1gtKAIqaV4yWnwT1J595yOgARyawzhSLqQiU43aSSI/template/preview
Norms of Collaboration – Annotated
https://iod.unh.edu/sites/default/files/3._norms_annotated.pdf
Team Roles: Accommodated Handout
https://docs.google.com/document/d/18ZMx7WgCWGXBqTc2PAhBcBlue7DzVwb4QluAt8vsTJE/edit
Help your students take more ownership over classroom collaboration.
https://www.commonsense.org/education/articles/3-ways-to-improve-your-group-work-lesson-plan
Assignment: Design a learning activity in small groups
Design a learning activity in small groups suitable for a hybrid class.
Define the learning goal and design the activity in a way that you assure that both online and on-site participants take equal part in it.
Make a list of necessary equipment and resources.
Reflection question for Unit 7.1
What risks can you identify in your plan?
What measures have you foreseen to be flexible and face unexpected technical or other difficulties?
7.2. Practical examples of teamwork and learner cooperation in online and hybrid teaching
In this video we asked a practising general school teacher, Erika Bartis, to share with us her experience in teamwork and cooperation during the online and hybrid work schedule in 2020 and 2021 in order to trigger challenging learning situations, help the course participants identify what seems most difficult to their learners in terms of cooperation.
After watching the video course participants will be asked to reflect upon their own practices, identify some difficulties in online and hybrid group work and cooperation in school context, and convert these difficulties into a challenge to be overcome.
We expect participants to provide further examples of efficient and engaging teamwork in online and hybrid context.
Links to extra readings, suggested resources, videos
Making Project-Based Learning Inclusive in a Hybrid Setting.
Advise from science teachers making efforts to help students feel connected when everyone isn’t in the same room: https://www.edutopia.org/article/making-project-based-learning-inclusive-hybrid-setting
Making teamwork more intentional – at Dayton Regional STEM School in the U.S.A., students use a collaboration log to keep track of how well they collaborate with each other over the course of a project. Here you can watch the video on how this works:
https://youtu.be/9QGvzWcVh2M
And this is the log that they use: https://www.edutopia.org/sites/default/files/2020-07/Dayton%20Regional%20STEM%20School%20Collaboration%20Log.pdf
Assignment: Keeping track of the actual involvement of each learner in the online and hybrid project work
On of the main challenges that the teacher in this video mentions that she cannot really keep track of the actual involvement of each learner in the online and hybrid project work, group work, she has the impression that some learners contribute very little to the group project.
Please reflect on your own practice and describe in max. 2000 characters the methods and tools you use to track the contribution of each group member to collaborative projects and other group activities.
You can link examples, tools, videos, photos, other resources that can help other teachers better understand your points.
Reflection question for Unit 7.2.
Have you ever tried hybrid learning during the Covid-19 pandemic or for other reasons (e.g. children missing from school for health or other reasons).
If yes, formulate one challenge (different then the ones mentioned in the video) that you faced during hybrid Teaching. How did you face this challenge?
If you have never tried hybrid teaching, could you imagine to use this way of teaching to involve a child who misses from school? Based on the video and other resources, how would you get prepared for a hybrid class?
Formulate your answer in 1000 characters.