In SOCI 383, Historical Research Methods, students have the opportunity to consider the methodological challenges that come along with state archiving and large-scale recordkeeping.
Overview
Dr. Renisa Mawani, Professor, Department of Sociology
While a large part of the course is theoretical, asking questions about the practice and purpose of archiving, whose voices have been represented, misrepresented, and systematically excluded in archival documents, Dr. Mawani finds it important to ground these questions through hands-on archival work. Students in her class have the option to choose from 3 options for their final projects:
1) Find and review a primary source, such as a document or photo from a public or family archive;
2) Write about social media and their own lives as a form of archival production;
3) Participate in a community-engaged learning project with organizations such as the BC Historical Federation, the Pacific Canada Heritage Centre-Museum of Migration, or the BC Heritage Labour Centre.
This Practical Learning article will highlight the work done by students in collaboration with the BC Historical Federation on a project to identify Indigenous, Black and People of Colour (IBPOC) who have contributed to the development of British Columbia but have not been credited for these contributions.
Goals & Objectives
Through their work with community organizations, students increase their fluency in historical research, including the nuanced aspects of archival research. By practicing this type of engagement, students gain an understanding of, and appreciation for, the scale and scope of archival materials that exist, and the silences and exclusions inherent within archival production.
Objectives
Generate meaningful contributions to organizations in our community
Practice the rituals of doing archival research including reaching out to an archivist, reviewing a database, checking the availability of sources, and developing critical reading skills to analyze archival documents
Understand the dynamics of inclusion and exclusion through practices of historical documentation
Recipe
Level of Difficulty: Medium
Course: SOCI 383 (“Historical Research Methods”)
Number of Students: 40
Time: Full term
Delivery: Small lectures and virtual organizational collaboration
Keywords: archival research, community engagement, historical documentation
Instructions
In small groups, students who opted for the community engagement option were connected to 1 of 4 local community organizations. Along with an undergraduate fellow hired through the Centre for Community Engaged Learning at UBC and staff from the organization, students determined the scope of their project and worked collaboratively to meet the project goals.
Students who worked with the BC Historical Federation identified, researched, and interviewed community members to generate a biographical sketch of IBPOC figures who have contributed to the development of British Columbia. These sketches were published in the British Columbia History Magazine.
Students worked with the undergraduate fellow and connected with Dr. Mawani throughout the term to develop an abstract and a proposal of project plans. In the last few classes, they gave a group presentation on their respective projects and submitted a final paper. This project – with all its different components – was worth 70% of their course grade.
Discussion
What have you heard from students about the experience?
Students who engaged with this practical learning method reflected positively on the experience of moving from theory to practice in a community-minded and collaborative way.
“We have to remember why history matters and what is at stake if we lose our connections to the past.”
Dr. Renisa Mawani
Professor, Department of Sociology
What are some changes or improvements you want to make in the future?
Organizing collaborations with community organizations was very labour intensive and challenging, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. I was grateful to have a wonderful undergraduate fellow who liaised between the community organizations and the students. When I teach this course again, I would scale back from four organizations to two, to make space and time to establish and maintain relationships with community organizations and to ensure that students are well supported.
Do you have any suggestions for other instructors who are considering practical learning for their course?
If you are considering incorporating an experience like this in your course, consider initiating discussions with potential community partners as early as possible. The undergraduate fellow that I worked with was key to the success of the project.
Collaborative learning flips the script on traditional, transmission-based approaches to post-secondary education, turning classrooms into dynamic spaces for interactive problem solving, more engaging discussions, and the co-creation of knowledge.
At its core, this involves grouping students together to explore course learning materials or solve problems. This can be as simple as having students work in pairs or as complex as large group projects.
The main idea is that each student can bring their own unique set of skills and perspectives to their group, creating a more enriching learning environment for everyone involved. Students can gain a deeper understanding of their subject this way and develop soft skills like communication, teamwork, and critical thinking.
These group activities are increasingly being facilitated by digital tools such as Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Office 365, Google Docs, or other cloud-based collaboration tools. These allow students to work together both synchronously and asynchronously, write together, and share feedback. For instructors, this also presents an opportunity, as many tools can enable them to monitor the progress of a project in real time while providing timely feedback to students. Additionally, students can receive peer feedback more easily, which can improve the quality of their writing and enhance their learning experience.
Improving student learning with collaboration
Creating a classroom community and relationship building: Collaborative learning can help to promote a sense of community in classrooms. With recent shifts to hybrid and online learning environments this has become increasingly important. Group activities provide an opportunity for students to build friendships while becoming familiar with each other’s strengths and work styles.
Student engagement and active learning
Students must interact with their peers, share ideas, and engage in group discussions, and this can often make the learning process for engaging for students. That is, collaborative learning often requires students to collectively solve problems and apply their knowledge. Additionally, the process of explaining concepts to peers can reinforce one’s own understanding of the subject matter.
Personal responsibility for learning and teamwork
These activities can empower students to take greater responsibility for their learning and negotiate roles within groups, while developing soft skills, like time management, communication and critical thinking that are also transferable to other academic and real-world settings.
Diverse perspectives and skill sets
Collaborative learning can support intellectual diversity, while enriching student’s understanding of the course material. Students bring a wide array of skills and knowledge from their individual disciplines, introducing their group members to viewpoints and approaches that they may not have considered before.
Flexible learning
Online collaborative learning tools allow students to complete group activities either synchronously or asynchronously, at times that are convenient for them.
Division of responsibility and reduced workloads
Being able to divide tasks based on individual skills and interests can increase student engagement and motivation while also reducing their overall workload (Dongho and Lim, 2018). This also helps students to develop important projects and team management skills.
Feedback
Online collaborative activities can allow instructors to provide more frequent and timely feedback to students at multiple stages of the learning process through online tools. Feedback can also be communal, making this process more scalable for instructors. Self- and peer-feedback during this process can also benefit students, allowing them to compare their work and negotiate edits more easily.
Improved insight into student learning
Online collaborative learning activities can allow instructors to trace student engagement, enabling more timely and specific feedback. This can also be a valuable resource for peer learning and study materials.
Digital literacy skills
Collaborative activities often make use of a wide array of digital tools to help facilitate the learning process. Students not only gain proficiency in these tools but can learn to critically evaluate and navigate their use during their projects.
Strategies for success
Promote student buy-in
Be honest and clear with students about why you have incorporated collaborative learning and its associated technologies into your course. Discuss some of the benefits of this approach and common challenges that they might encounter. By engaging students in these discussions and linking the use of different tools to the overarching learning objectives for your course, you are more likely to obtain their buy-in.
Aid in group formation
There are several ways to assign groups, such as random assignment, student-assigned groups, or instructor-assigned groups. Any of these methods should involve balancing diversity and compatibility within groups to promote effective collaboration. A mixture of these can also be used. For example, students benefit more from random or instructor-assigned groups at the beginning of term as this can help them to form better relationships with their classmates. Later in the term, students may prefer to create their own groups, once they have more knowledge of the working styles and personalities of their classmates. Regardless of which method you choose, smaller student groups are usually preferrable to larger ones. If a group is too large, it will become more difficult for students to schedule meetings and organize their tasks.
Assign roles and responsibilities
The assignment of specific roles within groups, such as note-taker, facilitator, timekeeper, or presenter is particularly helpful when students are beginning to organize. Specifically, provide clear instructions about what each role is responsible for. This is especially helpful when students have lower domain knowledge or lower collaboration skills.
Provide clear instructions, scripts and rubrics
Instructors should provide clear instructions, scripts, and training materials to assist students in their collaboration and the completion of learning activities. Providing a clear rubric, with the learning activity’s overall goals included, and ensuring that these instructions are rolled out consistently by both course instructors and TAs, will ensure students understand what is expected of them. Meanwhile, scripts provide groups with a framework to help with their collaboration. This can be particularly important for students who have less experience collaborating with their peers.
Promote peer feedback
Implementing peer feedback early in the collaborative process will help groups address any issues and help mitigate student concerns about grading fairness. This does not need to be a formal process and can involve regular check-ins with one another via an online forum, or during class time. Another effective strategy is to utilize peer feedback tools such as peerScholar or iPeer to allow students to evaluate the contributions of their group members and reflect on their own participation.
Align technologies with your learning objectives
A common trap is adapting one’s course to fit the specifications of a tool or technology. Before choosing what technologies to help facilitate collaborative learning, ensure that they align with the learning objectives of your course. Additionally, while a “one-size-fits-all” approach may assist with troubleshooting and the ability to monitor student interactions, instructors will often find considerable pushback from students who will want to use technologies that they have experience with and are comfortable using.
Provide time and opportunity for students to meet
Student’s often have widely different timetables, so providing time in class to meet can help to overcome these types of scheduling conflicts. Consider providing more time for students to complete collaborative assignments as well. If students are rushed, this often does not promote the type of generative discussions, editing, and feedback that are needed to produce high quality collaborative work.
Start small and seek student input
The design of an engaging collaborative activity takes time. Begin with a small, low stakes activity; then, build this up as you receive student feedback and develop the necessary support materials to ensure more substantial group activities run smoothly. A truly engaging activity may take several iterations to get right.
Tools to support collaborative learning
There are a variety of tools available to support collaborative learning.
Learning management systems (LMS)
LMS platforms, such as Moodle, Canvas, or Blackboard, offer tools that support collaborative learning. For example, discussion forums, wikis, and blogs can be used to facilitate group discussions and collaborative writing.
Scheduling tools
While general tools like Microsoft Outlook Calendar and Google calendar can help students to find times to meet, more dedicated apps like Doodle and When2meet are also useful when students need to schedule themselves. For online courses, tools like World Time Buddy can help to coordinate across different time zones.
Online communication tools
Tools like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Discord and Skype can be used for virtual meetings, group discussions, and collaborative projects. These tools allow students to communicate in real-time, regardless of their physical location.
Collaborative writing tools
Online writing and editing tools, such as Microsoft Office 365 and Google Docs, allow students to work both synchronously and asynchronously. They enable students to edit each other’s work and provide feedback to one another.
Social media
Twitter (X), Instagram, or WhatsApp can be used for real-time communication. For example, instructors can create a class hashtag or group, where students can share resources, ask questions, or collaborate on projects.
Task management platforms
There are several online platforms, such as Wrike, Trello, Asana, Basecamp that can be used to manage group projects and tasks. These tools allow students to assign tasks, set deadlines, and track progress, which can help keep group projects on track.
Gamification tools
Gamification tools, such as Kahoot, Quizlet, or Socrative, can be used to create interactive quizzes and games that encourage students to work together to solve problems and answer questions in a fun and engaging way.
Brainstorming tools
Tools like Microsoft Whiteboard or Google Jamboard can be used for brainstorming or group activities. These tools enable students to collaborate on ideas, diagrams, and sketches in real-time, which can enhance their creativity and problem-solving skills.
Peer review and feedback tools
Online tools like PeerScholar or iPeer can be used for collaborative writing assignments. They allow students to provide feedback and suggestions quickly, which can improve the overall quality of assignments.
Social bookmarking tools
Social bookmarking tools like Diigo or Pocket help students to share and organize online resources. Together, groups can share relevant articles, videos, and other content with peers, which can promote collaborative learning through knowledge sharing and discovery.
Virtual reality (VR) tools
VR tools like Engage or AltspaceVR can be used to create immersive learning experiences that promote collaboration and interactivity. Students can interact in virtual environments, which can be used for group activities like field trips or simulations.
The articles below are representative of the broader literature on collaborative learning, and provide several case studies highlighting how this can be approached in university classrooms:
Bovermann, K. and Bastiaens, T. (2019). How Gamification Can Foster Motivation and Collaboration in Blended Learning: A Mixed Methods Case Study. Journal of Interactive Learning Research, 30(3), 275–300. https://www.learntechlib.org/primary/p/184766/
Bovermann and Bastiaens investigated how gamification supported blended learning among 107 undergraduate students enrolled in an educational technology course, using a mixed methods approach. The game-based learning platform Kahoot was used to offer point-based quizzes on course concepts; afterwards, students participated in group work and additional points were earned based on peer reviews. A class leaderboard was used to track individual scores. The authors found that students participating in gamified class activities showed a significant increase in intrinsic motivation, task completion, and positive peer evaluations compared to students in a non-gamified learning environment. Students reported that the game and leaderboards were motivating, enjoyable, and fostered better engagement in classroom activities. Group collaboration was also positively impacted: students explained that the game increased group cohesion and encouraged communication. While Bovermann and Bastiaens argue that gamification can help structure individual and collaborative learning, they also indicate that instructor support is key to guiding such activities. Further, not all students enjoy the competitive nature of these learning environments and instructors may see a reduction in their overall motivation to participate.
Dobson, E. and Littleton, K. (2016). Digital technologies and the mediation of undergraduate students’ collaborative music compositional practices. Learning, Media and Technology, 41(2), 330–350. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439884.2015.1047850
Dobson and Littleton conducted a long-term ethnographic case study of an undergraduate group comprised of two creative music technology students and two theater students. Together, this group was tasked with co-creating an original piece of work that would then be presented to the public. The authors focused on analyzing the emergence of creative work, as well as the interrelationships between composition practices and the settings they unfolded in. They found that the broad array of digital music tools suggested during collaborative planning can promote self-awareness about assumptions one makes when choosing technologies and techniques for music composition. Further, collaborative discourse during composition signals further research is needed on how “long-term collaborative music making fosters collaborative learning, distributed creativity, and ... personal creativity.” Dobson and Littleton also explain that digitally resourced music composition is a complex interactional accomplishment: co-creation takes time, spans multiple social contexts/spaces, and dialogue can be facilitated by computer technology or educational software. Importantly, collaborative music composition can promote self-reflection and generate learning opportunities through knowledge sharing.
Dongho, K., and Lim, C. (2018). Promoting socially shared metacognitive regulation in collaborative project-based learning: a framework for the design of structured guidance. Teaching in Higher Education, 23(2), 194–211. https://doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2017.1379484
Dongho and Lim propose a framework for guiding socially shared metacognitive regulation to promote communication between students engaged in collaborative project-based learning. Specifically, their framework operates on five principals: (1) provide sufficient opportunities to monitor team progress; (2) have students identify potential issues; (3) encourage students to discuss possible solutions; (4) promote the efficient use of team resources through task prioritization; and (5) have students assign each team member to a specific task. The authors provided a collaboration script to 32 undergraduates enrolled in an introductory psychology course working on group projects. They found that students using the collaboration script to promote metacognitive regulation showed significantly higher levels of engagement and planning. Additionally, students using the script were more likely to transition from managerial interactions to intellectual interactions and knowledge co-construction. Instructors may be able to use the guidelines provided by Dongho and Lim to enhance student collaborations processes in their own classrooms.
Hadwin, A., Bakhtiar, A., & Miller, M. (2018). Challenges in online collaboration: effects of scripting shared task perceptions. International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning, 13, 301–329. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11412-018-9279-9
Hadwin et al. compared how different types of planning support aided students in overcoming challenges experienced during collaborative group work. Specifically, 180 undergraduate students enrolled in a learning strategies course were given a planning script before collaborating. Some groups were then provided visualizations summarizing planning information gathered from members before group work began. The authors found that groups who did not receive support in the form of visualizations reported planning as a more severe problem than those who did. Further these exacerbated challenges associated with progress checks, group work, and task completion during later stages of collaboration. Students also reported that planning strategies were more effective than teamwork strategies when they had not received visualizations to inform groups of individual planning perceptions and beliefs. Importantly, providing groups with visualizations that summarize planning perceptions of members appears to change the pattern of challenges that groups experience, and results in the adoption of more effective planning strategies during collaboration.
Harney, O., Hogan, M., & Quinn, S. (2017). Investigating the effects of peer to peer prompts on collaborative argumentation, consensus and perceived efficacy in collaborative learning. International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning, 12, 307–336. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11412-017-9263-9
Harney et al. compared facilitator-driven and peer-driven prompts on the perceived efficacy of interactive management in 101 first-year psychology students who were collaborating in small groups. Interactive management is a computer facilitated thought and action mapping method to aid in in group creativity, problem solving, design, and regulation. The authors found that those students in the peer-driven condition reported higher levels of perceived efficacy of the interactive management approach. Also, they showed higher levels of consensus, team orientation, and lower levels of discomfort in group learning. Harney et al. argue that consensus among team members may lead to higher levels of endorsement and engagement by group members as they respond to shared problems. Instructors may want to take a step back, passing the role of prompting to students if they have been provided structured guidance on how to effectively use prompts to facilitate group work.
Jeong, H., & Hmelo-Silver, C. (2016). Seven Affordances of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning: How to Support Collaborative Learning? How Can Technologies Help? Educational Psychologist, 51(2), 247–265. https://doi.org/10.1080/00461520.2016.1158654
Jeong and Hmelo-Silver discuss how technology can support collaborative learning and offer a variety of design strategies for instructors alongside examples of useful technologies. Specifically, the authors argue that computer-supported collaborative learning can provide learners opportunities to engage in joint tasks, communicate, share resources, be more productive during group work, co-construct knowledge, monitor and regulate group processes, and grow learning communities. However, while technology can provide many benefits when implemented thoughtfully, it is not a panacea. Technology must be supported by pedagogical strategies and social/cultural supports. Afterall, the goal should be to promote learning, not simply aid in the completion of a task. Jeong and Hmelo-Silver also warn that while their framework identifies a set of pedagogical and technological strategies, there is not a “one-to-one mapping between affordances and technologies.” Instructors must determine how such technologies will fit into their own pedagogical frameworks while being flexible enough to adapt to new technological innovations as they emerge.
Karantzas, G., Avery, M. R., MacFarlane, S., Mussap, A., Tooley, G., Hazelwood, Z., & Fitness. (2013). Enhancing critical analysis and problem-solving skills in undergraduate psychology: An evaluation of a collaborative learning and problem-based learning approach. Australian Journal of Psychology, 65(1), 38–45. https://doi.org/10.1111/ajpy.12009
Karantzas et al. investigated the use of a “choose your own adventure” (CYOA) tutorial program that assisted 273 undergraduate psychology students as they worked through case studies in small, collaborative working groups. The CYOA tutorial program combined both collaborative learning and problem-based learning approaches. At the end of each tutorial session, groups were asked to make a 5-minute class presentation about their case conceptualization and suggested course of action. The authors found that the program fostered critical analysis and problem-solving skills. Specifically, they suggest that instructors structure their classrooms to support students as they evaluate and test their own assumptions, use logic to unpack premises, and apply their knowledge to solve problems. The novelty of case studies provided to students in this study was also important to improving critical thinking and problem solving – instructors should keep this in mind when choosing course materials.
Lee and Lim investigated what issues were important to students as they evaluated their peers in a team project-based learning environment. They thematically analyzed the messages of 32 undergraduate students enrolled in an Instructional Methods and Educational Technology course at Seoul National University, and collaboration primarily took on asynchronous discussion boards. Peer evaluation was then conducted following two major team projects assigned during the semester. The authors found that students reported that their peers’ managerial, procedural, and social contributions were more important than their cognitive contributions. Specifically, social messages were important to building group cohesion and allowing the collaborative process to run more smoothly. Further, procedural and managerial messages were key to leading the team's progress and keeping the project on track. Students assessed intellectual messages, such as one’s own ideas, opinions, or thoughts, as being connected to the quality of group work; meanwhile, informational messages, such as resources or references, were associated with the overall quantity of work produced. Proactive, as opposed to reactive, messaging was also preferred. This study provides valuable guidance for students engaging in collaborative learning that instructors may wish to share in their support materials.
McPhee and Jerowsky explored how different learning technologies could support blended learning in a large fist-year Introduction to Geography course at the University of British Columbia. Collaborative learning was supported by Microsoft Teams, which provided a platform through which students could co-create and share documents, or video-conference with one another. Tapestry helped students to engage in self-directed learning, while Echoes promoted experiential learning through field trips. Finally, Voice Flow was used to support students through the creation of interactive chat bots. Overall, the authors indicated that student satisfaction with these technologies were high. While Microsoft Teams was rated the lowest of the four, students indicated that its primary benefit was collaboration and social interaction outside of class time. Students were excited to use new technologies to support their learning, but some felt increased stress and anxiety if they were not familiar with the platforms. McPhee and Jerowsky suggest that instructors choose digital tools that are easy to use and navigate, while allowing students to work at their own pace. Specifically, instructors should choose digital tools carefully, only using those that support course learning objectives. Further, the use of such tools in the classroom is an important part of improving the digital literacy of university students who will be expected to adapt to rapidly changing technologies in future labor markets or classrooms.
Onrubia, J., Rochera, M., Engel, A. (2015). Promoting individual and group regulated learning in collaborative settings: an experience in higher education. Electronic Journal of Research in Educational Psychology, 13(1), 1696–2095. https://doi.org/10.14204/ejrep.35.14058
Onrubia et al. conducted a study of 127 students enrolled in a computer-supported Educational Psychology course in which they were required to use a student log to reflect on their group work throughout the term. Student questionnaires, teacher self-reports, and grades were used to evaluate the student log's efficacy. Overall, students were satisfied with the log, noting that having to systematically and continuously turn in both individual and group evidence of collaboration helped them to manage their learning process. However, a primary complaint was the amount of additional time and effort this took to complete. Students also reported an improvement in their collaborative work throughout the term. Meanwhile, instructors felt that the student log increased awareness of work processes and encouraged the acquisition of planning, monitoring, and assessment skills. However, instructors also commented on the time commitment such learning interventions required, and that this can result in mechanistic approaches to completing them. Similarly, monitoring, and tutoring students in the completion of the student log required a considerable time commitment from the instructor.
Petrunich-Rutherford, M., & Daniel, F. (2019). Collaborative Quizzes: Impact on Student Performance and Attendance. Teaching of Psychology, 46(2), 115–120. https://doi.org/doi.org/10.1177/0098628319834172
Petrunich-Rutherford and Daniel compared students who were enrolled in collaborative and non-collaborative upper-level psychology courses as they investigated whether collaborative quizzes impacted performance, overall grades, exam grades, pass/fail rates, and attendance. The authors report that students enrolled in collaborative classes showed a significant increase in quiz performance across the semester compared to those enrolled in noncollaborative classes. Importantly, quiz performance did not decline for those taking collaborative quizzes either. However, collaborative quizzes led to a slight increase in overall course grades, and did not affect final exam performance or attendance. This study shows that collaborative quizzes may be a straightforward way to promote interactions in the classroom, and students also tend to enjoy this teaching technique. It may also encourage a deeper understanding of course materials, though these may not be directly reflected in final evaluations.
Poort, I., Jansen, E., & Hofman, A. (2023). Promoting University Students’ Engagement in Intercultural Group Work: The Importance of Expectancy, Value, and Cost. Research in Higher Education, 64, 331–348. https://doi.org/doi.org/10.1007/s11162-022-09705-8
Poort et al. used an expectancy-value theory framework to explore how components like self-efficacy, perceived benefit, and perceived cost relate to each other and contribute to intercultural group work. In doing so, the authors conducted a questionnaire with 846 undergraduate students from six universities in the Netherlands and Canada. They found that students’ expectations about their effective participation, perceived benefits, and perceived costs are motivational factors that affect engagement in intercultural group work. Students with low confidence in their capabilities tended to feel like they were out of control and this may lead to withdrawal from the group, avoidance of difficult tasks, and less commitment to the assignment. Additionally, negative emotions attributed to intercultural group work can also lower cognitive and behavioral engagement due to increased stress. Finally, the intercultural benefits of such group work are that it promotes intercultural competence and allows students to better understand their own cultural biases. This study suggests that to promote deep learning through intercultural group work, instructors should focus on having clearly designed assignments, ensuring instruction is given from the start, and providing support during reflection processes. While this can take additional time, it is important to lay strong foundations for intercultural group work at the beginning of post-secondary education so that this can effectively scaffold into upper-level courses.
Discover how Dr. Laura Baumvol, lecturer at the UBC School of Journalism, Writing, and Media, applied a learning circle activity to encourage student participation in academic writing and scholarly discourse through interactions with their peers.
Overview
Dr. Laura Baumvol, Lecturer at the School of Journalism, Writing, and Media
Reading Circles is a collaborative learning activity designed for a first-year academic research and communication course, WRDS 150B, Writing and Research in the Disciplines. This is a foundational course that introduces non-Arts undergraduate students to the ethical knowledge-making practices of scholarly communities, treating writing as a situated practice.
The Reading Circles activity was motivated by Dr. Laura Baumvol’s pedagogical approach which emphasizes the development a learning community where students are encouraged to support each other’s learning process and share their unique perspectives.
The activity introduces students to participating in academic writing and scholarly discourse through interactions with their peers. In the activity, students collaborate in small groups to read and critically analyze scholarly articles. They prepare for an oral discussion by writing on an online shared document in advance, then engage in group discussions and collaborate on the online document to summarize the key takeaways. After completing three Reading Circle activities in the first four weeks of the term, students engage in peer and self-assessment to help them reflect on their contributions and those of their peers.
The Reading Circles activity, first introduced in 2020, has gone through a series of iterations and has evolved significantly since then. The description of the activity below represents the version of the activity from January 2023.
As part of the TLEF project, Strategies for the Effective Design and Implementation of Collaborative Peer Learning Activities, Dr. Baumvol evaluated the Reading Circles activity across four terms of WRDS 150B to collect students’ feedback about their experience with the activity through surveys and focus groups. A summary of the evaluation results and reflections on how the Reading Circles activity evolved in response to student feedback are provided in the discussion section below.
“Based on their oral discussion of a research article, students collaboratively write on an online shared document. This allows me to examine their learning process and how they articulate different viewpoints and arguments through writing.”
Dr. Laura Baumvol
Lecturer at the School of Journalism, Writing, and Media
Goals & Objectives
The activity uses social-interactionist and collaborative pedagogies. It provides students a space for scaffolded learning with their peers in a small community of practice to critically analyze scholarly articles.
Collaborative writing is a key goal of the activity, and it requires students to work as a team to negotiate and articulate their different perspectives through writing. Aiming to challenge traditional and hierarchical forms of assessment conducted exclusively by the instructor, the activity incorporates peer and self-assessment on students’ individual and collaborative learning process.
Through this activity, students learn to:
Orally discuss their viewpoints about research articles to practice critical thinking skills
Engage in a learning community that supports the exchange of multiple ideas in a constructive way
Use online shared documents as a medium to develop collaborative written skills by collectively taking notes and writing key takeaways of their oral discussions
Practice self and peer assessment by thoughtfully reflecting on their peers’ and their own contributions to the collaborative learning process
Recipe
Level of Difficulty: High
Course: WRDS 150B (Writing and Research In the Disciplines)
Number of Students: Small lectures (approximately 30 students)
Time: 4 weeks
Keywords: Group work, collaborative academic writing, collaborative learning
Instructions
Preparatory Work
Provide students with their assigned article(s) ahead of time along with detailed instructions outlining the process of running the Reading Circles.
Sort students into their assigned groups of four or five for the activity. Then, ensure that students can view their groups in the People section on Canvas.
Set up collaborative writing documents for each group and distribute the links to each group.
Set up a Group Assignment on Canvas for the groups to submit their summary paragraphs with the final takeaways of the discussion.
Method
The Reading Circles activity takes place over three in-person class sessions spaced one week apart. Each week, students are assigned a different article and prepare this role in advance and work collaboratively to write the key takeaways of their oral discussion of the scholarly article. The fourth week is used by the instructor to provide feedback on the second Reading Circle and the completion of peer and self-assessment by students.
In their assigned groups, students engage in oral discussion during class time to analyze one of the required readings. Following this, they work collaboratively to write a paragraph with the “key takeaways” of their oral discussion on an online shared document.
Each student takes one of four roles in the discussion: proposing questions for discussion, identifying the key idea of the reading, linking concepts from the reading to other references and ideas, or proposing commentary and critique on the reading. Students must write their contribution on the online shared document 24 hours before the class session where the discussion will take place. Each contribution is expected to be a maximum of 150 words. Students must rotate roles in the three Reading Circles activities.
During the in-class discussions, students take notes together to capture their key ideas using the online platform. All students assist with notetaking, whether they are proposing questions, identifying key points for the reading, linking references to the reading, or providing commentary on the reading.
Following the discussion, group members work collaboratively to write a 250–300-word paragraph summarizing the key takeaways from that day’s class discussion. One group member must upload the final document to Canvas for grading.
Students take part in three separate Reading Circles in successive weeks at the beginning of the term. The first week’s activity is ungraded and used for modeling and practice. It gives students a chance to become familiar with the assignment expectations, work through the collaboration process with group members and receive feedback from the instructor. Groups receive feedback, but the summaries are not graded. For the following two Reading Circle activities, students receive grades on the summary paragraph
After the three Reading Circle activities are finished, students complete a self and peer assessment exercise using PeerScholar to provide feedback on the contributions of their group members and to reflect on their own participation and contributions.
Grading
The grade for the Reading Circles activity makes up 10% of the final grade for the course. 90% of the grade for the activity is based on the two group summary paragraphs from the second and third Reading Circles, for which all students receive the same grade. 10% of the grade is based on peer and self-assessment component, which may differ for each student depending on their contributions to the group.
The grading rubric includes the following criteria:
Establishment of relevant links with external sources and use of appropriate scholarly discourse and features, including proper attribution of statements to scholars through citations;
Demonstration of critical thinking skills and original thoughts
Display of logically organized argument and cohesiveness that ensure the flow of ideas.
The rubric scale used ranges from 0 to 5: Exceeds expectations (5); Substantially Meets: Expectations (4); Meets Expectations (3.5); Below Expectations (2): Did not Meet Expectations (0).
An individual component, such as a reflection activity could be introduced into the larger activity to provide a way to assess individual student learning.
A peer assessment step could be included after each Reading Circle to provide students earlier and more frequent feedback about how their contributions are being perceived by their peers. This would also give the instructor more insight into whether groups are functioning effectively while there is still time for intervention.
Discussion
In which course did you use collaborative learning? What is the general nature of the course and how many students are generally on the course?
I have been using collaborative learning in my sections of the first-year course WRDS 150B (Writing and Research in the Disciplines). They are composed of approximately 30 “non-Arts students”, from areas such as science and engineering. Students are introduced to situated scholarly practices and genres as novice scholars. They learn discourse and language features in context to produce academic genres. The course adopts a scaffolded approach and students start by writing an annotated bibliography, then produce a research proposal and presentation and, finally, their own research paper.
Why do you incorporate collaborative learning? What outcomes were you hoping to achieve?
My use of collaborative learning evolved over time because my pedagogy has always included not only lectures, but also small group activities in which students would cooperate to “do things”. For example, they would critically discuss and analyze language features of scholarly discourse and learn with and from each other. I would walk around during class time to monitor what they were doing, offer help, etc. However, in July and August 2020, I started preparing to teach in an online setting in September. I realized I had to redesign the activities because group work would require putting students in breakout rooms. This wouldn’t allow me to fully understand different groups’ collaborative work and learning. So, in addition to having oral discussions via Zoom, students would use an online shared document to allow them to work together synchronously and asynchronously throughout the course (usually weeks 2 to 11). My goal was to have oral discussions and collaborative writing to give students the opportunity to both “collaborate to learn and learn to collaborate”. As I was doing that on my own, I was approached to UBC Arts ISIT to join the broader UBC TLEF project on Collaborative Peer Learning Activities.
In September 2021, UBC returned to full in-person teaching and, based on student feedback that I had received, I decided that most of the small collaborative activities would be done during class time. Yet, I kept a collaborative writing component in one of the course key assignments, a group activity focused on three of the course required readings in which students would be assigned different roles. One student would be the “person who identifies the key idea”, the other the “commentator”, the other the “linker of ideas,” and finally, one student would be the “note-taker”. For example, the “linker of ideas” was asked to connect the reading to any other scholarly work, including the course readings, and popularized reliable sources.
For example, the “linker of ideas” was asked to connect the reading to any other scholarly work, including the course readings, and popularized reliable sources.
Each student would prepare and write the contribution for their role in advance on an online collaborative document. They could read their peers’ work in advance to get ready for the in-person oral discussion. During class time, right before starting the discussion, students would go over the collaborative document and each one would orally explain their contribution to their peers in more detail. Students were then asked to engage in a critical discussion and analysis around the article and collaborate to write up a final paragraph with the key takeaways of this discussion, which would be submitted for grading. The activity took place at the beginning of the term, over three weeks, with groups engaging in a Reading Circle activity around a different article each week.
What learning benefits have you seen from the activity?
I noticed that the written component of the collaborative learning assignment made it easier for me to understand how students articulated their thoughts and to assess the process of their work, not only the final product. Of course, I still wanted to keep the oral component of the activity, but I found it fascinating how the written element offered me opportunities to better visualize students’ learning process and the way students make connections and build their arguments in writing. This is a first-year course and students are not familiar with reading and discussing scholarly work.
The Reading Circles activity provided them with a supported environment to begin learning how to engage in academic discourse conversations. It also made them experience different aspects of collaborative work, such as time management, dividing tasks, and negotiating different perspectives and ideas and other things like that.
What feedback did students share about their experience with the Collaborative Learning activities?
Students reported that they enjoyed the Reading Circles because the activity builds onto the major assignments to be completed later in the term, which also require collaboration. Their feedback made it clear that the activity offered them relevant scaffolding opportunities. I think the knowledge and skills gained by collaborating can sometimes be underestimated by students, but the surveys and focus groups results from different terms showed that the great majority of students understood the value of learning in a collaborative environment. Most of them also mentioned that working in small groups allowed them to build connections with other students. They valued the relationships that came out of group work and even the friends they made.
Regarding the written component of the Reading Circles and collaborative writing, at the beginning of the term, students told me that they did not enjoy writing in general and did not value group work. They were very honest about it. After completing the Reading Circles, students said that the activity helped them understand different aspects of the research articles and they mentioned the value of collaboration, making it a unique experience. In all midterm reflections and final reflections, as well as in the project surveys and focus groups, students said that this activity was, by far, the one they enjoyed the most during the entire course.
What are some changes you have made in response to student feedback?
There were two main changes I made based on the feedback received from students. One of them was making the very first Reading Circle ungraded to allow students an “ungraded” opportunity to practice working together on critically analyzing research articles and to receive feedback on their work. Students said this practice allowed them to better understand their roles in the activity and that the feedback received made them more confident to complete the following graded Reading Circles.
A second change I made was adding a peer and self-assessment component to the activity. When I first started the Reading Circles during remote teaching, there were TA resources available. TAs helped me give detailed feedback on each student’s individual contribution to the online shared document. When going back to in-person classes, I did not have this support anymore and it became challenging to manage the workload on my own. This is when I started thinking about which pedagogical changes could be made and how they would impact the goals of the Reading Circles. To make the activity possible, I decided to provide constructive and detailed feedback only on the paragraph of the key takeaways of the oral discussion written by each group of students. To assess individual work, and ensure students were held accountable for their individual participation and contributions to the group, I designed, along with Arts ISIT, peer and self-assessment through PeerScholar as part of students’ final grade for the activity. So, reducing the instructor’s workload made the Reading Circles viable.
Do you have any suggestions for instructors considering this type of collaborative learning activity for their course?
Yes. The number one lesson I learned is that “less is more”. During the pandemic, when I first started implementing collaborative activities that had writing as a major component, I asked students to work together on online shared documents for several activities across different course topics. From their feedback, and my own perception, students were feeling overwhelmed by so many collaborative learning assignments. As a result, I decided to reduce the number of this kind of activity, keeping just the essential ones.
A second suggestion is to try to make the grading of group work as accountable, transparent, and fair as possible. I think this is something an instructor who would like to do something similar would have to pay attention to. Taking into consideration not only the “final product” of a collaborative activity but also the process is the most time-consuming part. Instructors should be prepared to manage those groups that face challenges and reinforce the entire time how students should work directly on the online document instead of working somewhere else and just copying and pasting on it because seeing how they collaborate on the document is key in this activity. Collaboration is an important part of the activity’s learning goals and assessment.
Another recommendation is to have clear roles for each group member, with very detailed instructions explaining what is expected for each role. Having examples of each role’s contribution from previous Reading Circles available in advance is extremely useful.
Also, it is crucial to provide students with timely feedback because the Reading Circles are a weekly activity. Instructors need to be ready because they will have to give feedback in one day and a half so students can access it and learn from it before engaging in the following Reading Circle.
Do you wish to share anything further?
When I look at the development of the Reading Circles activity and the results of the surveys (January 2021 to January 2023; 4 terms) and the two focus groups (September 2022 and January 2023 terms; 2 terms), I realize how much I’ve learned from the feedback and how the activity has improved over time.
I see a big jump in the quality of the design of the activity from when I first started compared to when I engaged in the TLEF project. The support I received from Arts ISIT to collect, analyze, and reflect on the data helped me to make informed decisions. I see clear improvements in different aspects, such as the instructions, the expectations for each role, the guidance and gains from students’ collaboration, individual accountability, and types of assessment.
As a new instructor, back in 2019, I would design the activity based on the pedagogies I had experience with. But once I started reflecting on the teaching and learning experience and now that I have the data informing my decisions, I feel much more confident about what I am doing. My decisions now resonate more with my principles of teaching. Sometimes, looking at your own teaching approaches and questioning non what you do can be a difficult thing. It’s much easier to change when you can look at what students are saying and then realize “you know what, this is true.” My involvement in this entire project has given me a unique opportunity to view my teaching from somebody else’s eyes. I was able to see things that on my own I would not have seen.
Overall, student responses collected through the evaluation were positive, while offering useful feedback to help Dr. Baumvol understand what elements of the activity students valued the most along with potential areas for enhancement. Across all terms, there was strong indication that students felt the Reading Circles activity was beneficial to their learning. Feedback also showed that students believed the activity helped them develop their individual reading and writing skills and transferable skills in collaborative writing and group decision making. Survey responses regarding student perceptions of learning outcomes were generally positive, as seen in the following results that show the aggregate responses across four terms:
Q12_6: Collaborating with other students in this group activity was beneficial to my learning in the course.
Using the feedback from students from the January 2021 and September 2021 terms, Dr. Baumvol engaged in a redesign of the Reading Circles activity in the summer of 2022. Further evaluation of the activity was then conducted in the September 2022 and January 2023 terms to evaluate the impact of these changes.
Project timeline
The evaluation report provides a comprehensive view on the iterations of the Reading Circles activity along with analysis and findings from the student feedback that was collected from the September 2022 and January 2023 terms.
The design and evaluation summary tells the story of how Dr. Baumvol adapted the design of the activity over this time period in response to the student feedback.
This assignment would not have been possible without previous group activities designed by Dr. Jaclyn Rea and Dr. Laila Ferreira that they kindly shared with me.
I would also like to thank the undergraduate academic assistant, Neve Eilam; Arts ISIT Learning Designer, Meena Kahlon; and CTLT/Arts ISIT Faculty Liaison, Jason Myers, for their support in the design and evaluation of the activity.
Thanks to graduate academic assistant, Michael Jerowsky, for his support in the development of the teaching story.
Discover how ENGL 243: Speculative Fiction students worked together to construct a synthetic human based on literary and cultural representations of synthetic humans in plausible near-future settings.
Overview
Dr. Gisèle Baxter, Sessional Lecturer at the Department of English Language and Literatures
In ENGL 243: Speculative Fiction, students work in small groups of six or seven people over the course of the term to “construct” a synthetic human based on literary/cultural representations of synthetic humans in plausible near future settings.
While the students don’t literally construct their created beings, they work together to produce a collaborative written description of their synthetic human along with an in-class presentation that uses slides and apps for illustrative purposes. Groups must integrate relevant research into their project and are required to include a bibliography that includes 3-10 primary non-academic sources, 3-10 secondary academic sources, and 3-10 primary texts, including at least three of the course texts, used to provide ideas and inspiration.
“Through this course, I wanted students to get into the real-world arguments about ethics, risks, and benefits intrinsic to the notion of synthetic humans, and to see their approach to this group project in terms of its real-world reflections.”
Dr. Gisèle Baxter
Sessional Lecturer at the Department of English Language and Literatures
Goals & Objectives
The assignment, as part of ENGL 243, Speculative Fiction, provides an opportunity for students to explore the course’s concern with the literary/cultural representation of various synthetic humans through a collaborative project that is creative and enjoyable while still being pedagogically and academically grounded. The project provides a space for students to engage in collaborative exploration with their peers in a way that is integrated into the structure of the course, allowing for students to have an ongoing space for discussions around course material and material adjacent to it that they may be interested in.
Objectives
The project and group composition should be inclusive, so that no group is advantaged or disadvantaged by its members’ abilities, preferences, and resources and so that all groups are respectful environments, where everyone is a valuable member of the group, and no one is compelled to do something that makes them uncomfortable.
The project should be pedagogically sound: to enable exploration of the course’s concern with the literary/cultural representation of various synthetic humans and to require academic work, including textual analysis and research (both primary and secondary).
The project should be manageable, without taking up too much class time or too much of students’ time outside class.
The project should be enjoyable, to allow exploration of those what-if, alternate-reality readings that so many of the texts invite and to allow imaginative engagement with the course’s central questions: what motivations might go into the development and construction of synthetic humans? What forms might such beings take?
Recipe
Level of Difficulty: High (full term activity)
Course: ENGL 243, “Speculative Fiction”
Number of Students: up to 45
Expected Prep Time: 2 weeks (for integrating into an existing course)
Ahead of the term, create a detailed handout that provides all of the details of the project for students including: the motivation behind it, learning outcomes, connection with the course material, overall schedule outlining the different steps and expectations for the final report and presentation.
Create a survey aimed at understanding student preferences for working in a group to be administered to students at the beginning of the term and used to guide group formation. The survey is used to help make sure there is a balance in each group between students who are comfortable presenting and those more inclined to do the academic research aspects of the project.
Create course material posted to Canvas that provides information about AI, robotics and genetic engineering to serve as idea generators for the students. Create and share resources in Canvas to provide information about different technical tools groups might use for developing the materials for their presentations.
Plan into the course schedule class session time for groups to meet for planning and discussing project tasks with their groups. Set aside time during class once the groups have been announced so that group members can meet in person and introduce themselves.
Method
Initiating the activity:
At the start of the term, students complete a short survey to indicate their preferences for different aspects of the project. The instructor then uses the results from the survey to divide the students into groups of 6 or 7.
Once the groups have been established, the instructor creates a discussion space in Canvas for each of the groups to have an initial space for communication.
Student groups meet during class to introduce themselves, begin discussing and planning their project work, and decide on how they will communicate. Starting at about midway through the term, students were given some time at the end of class once a week to work together on their projects.
Feedback and facilitation:
At different points, groups are required to check in with the instructor for accountability and feedback. One reporter from each group is asked to email the instructor to share their project idea and let the instructor know if they are having difficulty finding times to meet. Each student is also required to email the instructor regarding their own participation in the group.
Throughout the term, the instructor monitors group processes to identify and resolve conflicts that arise due to group dynamics or other unavoidable or unforeseen problems. Although most conflicts can likely be resolved within the groups, some situations may arise where instructor intervention is needed or accommodations need to be granted due to external circumstances.
Final presentation and report:
Group presentations are scheduled across multiple class sessions at the end of the term. Groups are randomly selected to determine the order of the presentations.
In addition to the presentation, student groups submit a formal final report to Canvas. As part of the final report, groups include a brief description of individual contributions to the group project, a bibliography of primary and secondary texts referenced and an overview of the project.
Grading
In order to make sure the group project is pedagogically sound and worth a significant percentage of their grade, the weighting was set to 20% of the overall course grade, with all students in each group assigned the same grade. Since the activity was initially done as a pilot, it was graded generously and modifications to the grading may need to be done when the course is offered again.
Ideas for improvement include rewriting the initial assignment document to clarify the roles and project stages in the initial description of the project, to emphasize how and why they are important, and to provide more guidance on collaboration strategies. A policy for conflict resolution in case issues with group dynamics need to be settled might also be included.
Re-design the course schedule and content requirements to drop one of the course texts to allow more time in class to devote to group meetings.
Start the process of conducting the survey and setting up groups earlier in the term so that students can begin working collaboratively earlier and mitigate some of the time challenges at the end of the term when they have multiple assignments due.
Discussion
In which course did you use collaborative learning? What is the general nature of the course and how many students are generally in the course?
It is a second-year course aimed at a fairly general student body. Not all of our students are from Arts. I do get a certain number of Science students. They are in different disciplinary areas which are adjacent to the kind of questions that we are asking in the course, such psychology, psychiatry, medical science, engineering, history, and philosophy.
About the course: Around 5 years ago I was part of a subcommittee set up by the Department of English Language and Literatures that was writing courses in areas of popular culture and was asked to write a prospectus for a course in Science Fiction and Fantasy. I felt that that I had enough opportunity to teach fantasy in other courses such as Children’s Literature and Victorian Literature, so this course needed to emphasize science fiction. Roughly at the same time, I was starting to give a series of conference papers on synthetic humans, and in that context of research I decided to focus this course narrowly on near future scenarios that draw on the research that we are doing now, such as research into Artificial Intelligence (AI), robotics, genetic engineering, genetic manipulation. ENGL 243 Speculative Fiction tends to attract students who are quite ardent about this material.
Why do you incorporate collaborative learning? What outcomes were you hoping to achieve?
I always have discussion forums on Canvas to permit more engagement with the class discussions and quite often people take a discussion prompt and respond directly to it. In this class, however, students were reading each other’s prompts; they would get into discussions and go off on a tangent. The class was showing a mutual interest,in the course material or at least in materials that are adjacent to it, so I thought they would probably enjoy an opportunity to pursue this kind of collaborative exploration with concrete motivation by having it as part of the project which would get them some credit in the course. The energy that they put into the discussion motivated me to implement this collaborative activity.
What was your role as the instructor in the process? What types of structure and support did you provide to students?
Even before the groups were established, I wanted the students to have a clear sense of what the project would be. I did two things ahead of time. First, I came up with a handout which provides details of the project: the motivation behind it, aims, learning outcomes, components, and connection with the course materials. The next thing I did was send them a survey where I asked them to identify, using a list of what would be involved in the project, what they are willing to do or absolutely unwilling to do. I wanted there to be enough to do in terms of research, design, and organisation that they would achieve pedagogical benefits and contribute something pedagogically sound. I tried to make sure that there was a balance between people who are perfectly comfortable with presenting and others who were not so sure about it. The toughest part was finding people who were interested in academic research component, as almost no student wanted to do that. Finally, I had to stress that being an intermediate-level literature course, it required academic research as a skill set, so that requirement would not be waived.
Then I set up the groups, keeping in mind that the group formation should allow a proper distribution of good presenters and people who may be shy about speaking up. I asked every student to email me regarding their individual participation in the group. I also asked one reporter from each group to email me and let me know if they were having difficulty finding time to meet and work together. Most of them were having difficulty with time, so starting right around midterm break I decided that at least once a week, and towards the end every day, they would have a set amount of time in class for working together.
I scheduled the presentation using the old draw of the hat, and prior to the presentations, the students were required to give me some sense of what they were working on, their focus area. In addition, they were required to submit a report providing a description and justification for the synthetic human that they were designing. It had to identify at least three of the course texts that served as inspiration, or at least that gave them ideas to work on. It also had to identify some secondary research materials that they consulted, which could be academic material or non-academic material.
On Canvas I have links to information about AI, robotics, genetic engineering, and so forth, in separate Pages in the General Resources Module, to provide idea generators for the students.
How did the activity work in terms of grading and feedback?
I wanted this to be pedagogically sound and worth a significant percentage of their grade, so I decided to make it worth 20%. However, it was a pilot project, so I marked it quite generously.
Required elements of the project included a brief description of individual contribution to the group project, a bibliography of primary and secondary texts (with a specific minimum number of academic sources required), plus an overview of the project. This work culminated in their presentations, and at the final stage in a coherent piece of writing in the form of a formal report including all the project elements identified here. The presentations and their accompany scripts were posted on Canvas after they took place (as this enabled the slides to be seen more clearly than on the classroom projector screen).
Throughout, I was available to address questions about approach and about the suitability of sources. The general marking standards used were the standards for undergraduate work identified on the website for the Department of English Language and Literatures.
What learning benefits have you seen?
Through this course, I wanted students to get into psychological and philosophical arguments about ethics, risks, and benefits, and to see this in terms of its real-world reflections and step outside the hallowed halls of academia. I also wanted to give them the opportunity of building connections. On the whole, I think that did happen: when the groups met in class, conversation was consistent, lively, and on topic. The presentations (and the synthetic humans) exceeded my expectations. I think students liked an opportunity to engage with literary/cultural texts in ways that invited consideration of real-world questions and concerns.
Reflection on the feedback?
When designing this project, I was concerned about some issues, such a member of a group falling sick and personality conflicts within the group. If I were to run it again, I would have some sort of conflict resolution strategy in case any group implodes or at least some members of the group have difficulty working with each other. One of the big problems was that students were facing difficulty setting up times outside of class to work on the project, as many do not have a lot of free time to meet. I discovered they very much preferred meeting in person to using apps or the Canvas discussion forums.
What are some changes or improvements you wish to include in the future?
I think I would do an overhaul of the initial document, clarify the roles in the initial description of the project, provide more information about the various stages, emphasize how and why they are important, and probably also have a section on some collaboration strategies. I would also develop some kind of policy for conflict resolution in case group dynamics need to be settled.
There are two other key things that I would do differently if I were to set the project again. First of all, I would drop one of the course texts so that we would have more time to devote during class to group meetings. The other thing is that I would try to get the whole thing set up in the first week, requiring everyone then to read the handout and complete the survey, so that by the beginning of second week all the groups could start meeting and working collaboratively. (I would have to build in a strategy to address the tendency in the first few weeks for some students to drop and others to register late.)
Do you have any suggestions for instructors considering this type of collaborative learning activity for their course?
I think I would give them the same advice that I was given when I started teaching my own my own classes, which was to make use of your colleagues, talk to people who have done this sort of thing.
Figure out how to read your class as soon as possible in term, find out what they’re interested in, and get them to introduce themselves. Early in the term is also the shopping period where people are still deciding on the classes they want to register for and continue with, so you have new students coming in. For this, a system may be set up where students can introduce themselves on a rolling basis and you can find out about their familiarity with the course material, which, I think, would be very helpful in designing the project and forming the groups.
The introductions and group formations should be done much earlier in the term to enable students to get to know each other and start working together sooner rather than later.
Do you wish to share anything further?
I think it was a very valuable experience for the class on the whole and also for me because it gave me much greater confidence about the possibilities of collaborative learning, in terms of content, scenarios, the premises that students had to work up and the ways in which they needed to draw connections between those premises and the specific things that we were looking at in the course texts. I ended up learning about other disciplinary areas and the kinds of ethical questions they would ask (I very fondly remember the lively debates involving perspectives from psychology and philosophy), and about breakthroughs in genetic engineering and AI.
The best part of the project is that it opens up the possibility of a mutual learning experience both for the class and the instructor.
In Urban Ethnographic Field School, students discuss readings and ideas that they are working on, comparing and contrasting experiences of people doing ethnographies all over the world, how they write and what kind of techniques they use, and how they take field notes.
Overview
Dr. Patrick Moore, Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology
In Urban Ethnographic Field School, students take part in regular coursework during the mornings (Monday to Thursday), discussing readings and ideas that they are working on, comparing and contrasting experiences of people doing ethnographies all over the world, how they write and what kind of techniques they use, and how they take field notes.
This is also the time that students discuss how to best succeed in their placements and make meaningful contributions to the organizations. The rest of the time, students are working at their placements with various front-line, non-profit organizations working with the community on immigrant services, food and food security, and so on. In this part of their course, students are working on whatever those organizations need them to do, developing the skills that one would use in service-oriented areas.
Goals & Objectives
This course allows students to analyze and apply readings to their real-world experiences in different workplace environments and while interacting with community members, eventually allowing them to develop necessary reflective and analytical skills for creating vivid narratives that authentically capture people’s lives in and around an organization.
Objectives
Develop students’ abilities to gather information, analyze and reflect on experiences to create unique narratives and tailor their writing to authentically capture a real-world context and its people
Provide opportunities for students to engage with community members and organizations so that they can add to their experiences of how people live and work
Provide students with examples of the different styles and operation types that organizations can have in the same environment or locale
Allow opportunities for students to dedicate themselves to the work prioritized by the organization, and to develop skills enabling them to effectively work with other people
Provide opportunities for students to apply and develop skills from academic contexts like survey skills, or real-world skills that people need, such as the skills required to put up an irrigation system in an urban farm
Allow students to conduct ethnographic field work during this six-week course and four assignments to develop their ethnographic writing style, which is more analytical than their usual written assignment expectations, as it forces students to have experiences and think about things quite deeply and reflectively to show through their writing what is going on and capturing what the people are like
Recipe
Level of Difficulty: High
Course: ANTH 480 (“Urban Ethnographic Field School”)
Number of Students: 30
Expected Prep Work: High
Time: 6 weeks
Delivery: Lecture and placement
Instructions
Students are provided with the following experiences to think about things quite deeply and reflectively, and develop important practical skills to help them be better at whatever job they eventually have:
Students are prepared to go and work with front line organizations and individuals who use those services.
Each student conducts a one-hour interview with one representative from the organization that they are placed with, to understand the way the organization works and what it is trying to do.
Students orient themselves into the organizations they are placed with, studying how the institutions are organized and their priorities, working out their own roles, and how they can contribute while learning about community.
Students take field notes and complete participant observations during their placements.
Students frequently converse or conduct interviews with people, reflecting on the many stories and experiences to try to create a vivid narrative about a place or institution.
Eventually, students create an argument and build a story which is ethnographic and richly descriptive so that readers can learn about these places.
Grading is based on four written assignments (ethnographies): one about the community that they are working in, one about the institution, one about the program, and one that synthesizes everything; and a final practical display in which students convey the work that an organization is doing. The displays are not academic or PowerPoint presentations, but rather different interactive activities that would highlight what their organization is all about. These displays are shared with community partners during an event at the end of the course.
Discussion
Why do you incorporate Practical Learning?
I think it is useful for students as it broadens their appreciation for very diverse skills, and helps them realize that those skills, which may not be as highly valued in the academic context, are extremely valuable for them and for communities. The kind of writing that students do, ethnographic writing with vivid descriptions, and thinking about things very carefully and positioning themselves thoughtfully in their work, is a powerful form of thinking and writing.
I think the experience of working with community is useful for them, as they see themselves as being able to make substantial contributions to organizations. This work draws on the skills that students have and they make an important contribution through their work. It also provides the community organizations with a positive link with UBC and UBC’s resources, like accessing funding through community engagement projects. Our students are not just playing around; they get out there and do stuff, and it is beneficial on both sides, for students and the organizations.
“In this course, practical learning is about reclaiming that broad set of skills we need as humans to function in our daily life and expanding students' awareness as they deal with diverse people in the real world when placed in organizations that are serving the general public, for instance, people who are food insecure, have mental health issues or have drug dependencies.”
Dr. Patrick Moore
Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology
What did students share about their experience with the Practical Learning activities?
I think the amount of work is stressful and demanding with enormous reading and doing half day in class and all the work with the organisations. In spite of so much to be done in a six-week period, students are well prepared, support each other, and write some amazing assignments. The students have a one-page reflection at the end of each ethnography, and they generally are wildly enthusiastic about the whole experience.
They always give us these over-the-top cards at the end of the course. They seem to deeply appreciate having knowledge and experience of different people in a context where it is not fearful for them. There are students, some of our best, who come from other departments that find the overall experience important for them as it is different from a lot of things that they would do in their other courses.
What are some changes or improvements which you wish to include in future?
One of the things that I always worry about, that is always a challenge to deal with, and to which I do not have the total solution is the Downtown Eastside itself. There are dangers associated with that community, and I do not like to expose students to danger. We do minimize danger as much as we can, but there are things that happen there which are not everyday events in most of suburban contexts in Vancouver. I do not exaggerate certain stereotypes, but at the same time, I want to stay realistic and keep students safe. So, I could have students do more of their placements in other areas.
Do you have any suggestions for instructors considering this Practical Learning for their course?
I think one thing that they can do is see who is already doing that kind of work and from talking to other professors get ideas and ways of making it workable. Maybe even have an opportunity to co-teach where they work with somebody who has been doing it for a while and then being experienced that way.
I would just encourage people to do that. It is not the easiest road to academic success, and is time consuming, but I think it is rewarding at the same time. It is extremely valuable for students and for the communities, but you have to have your balance right— what is valued by the academy and disciplines, and still meets student needs.
In THTR 308, a Sound Design course, students learn about different considerations when it comes to the design of sound for live or virtual productions.
Overview
Dr. Patrick Parra Pennefather, Assistant Professor at UBC Theatre and Film
The instructor facilitates a learning environment where students are provided tools, direction, and practice to understand the various characteristics that contribute towards designing sound for different media. In MDIA 470, a course deeply embedded within the Emerging Media Lab (EML) at UBC, the learning outcomes have been developed based on competencies that are expected of students when they graduate and work collaboratively with others to develop technology.
Students are expected to learn how to work collaboratively, apply appropriate methodologies, problem solve, and ultimately create some type of workable prototype using Virtual Reality (VR) or another medium.
Goals & Objectives
Both THTR 308 and MDIA 470 engage students to apply design thinking and explore different tools and methodologies for problem-solving, and eventually develop the necessary competencies, capacities, and resilience to eventually transition into communities of practice when they graduate.
Objectives
Develop students’ abilities to apply design thinking skills to the needs of a real-world problem, context and audience
Provide opportunities for students to engage with each other so that they can become familiar with the skills, knowledge and attributes needed from each team member to successfully work collaboratively
Encourage students, as they are all equally responsible towards their learning, to advocate for themselves by determining class development and evolution together with the instructor and peers, and accept that an idea contributed by them is equal to any other contribution, including that of the instructor
Provide opportunities for students to reflect on their own willingness to learn and develop competencies along with regular reflection on project development
Allow students to become aware of their own heuristics or their own rules of play so that they overcome barriers to identifying root causes of problems, and be ready to continuously iterate and improve solutions or prototypes
Recipe
Level of Difficulty: High
Course: THTR 308 (“Sound Design”) and MDIA 470 (“Special Topics”)
Number of Students: Small to medium lectures with 35 to 140 students
Via weekly short interactive lecture topics, brainstorming activities, and discussions, students take part in the following activities:
Prepare students for the course by discussing development of the class lectures and activities by using some brainstorming tools and visual tools such as MIRO, and collaboratively determining course content, assignments, and course direction. Developing core values and rules of play for their interactions with one another is also an essential starting point for every course.
Students begin by learning basic design thinking skills that focus them on human-centered design and the building of an aligned team culture. In THTR 308, simple design thinking activities engage students in coming up with a system for their behavior with each other, towards course content, and towards the overall teaching and learning environment. In MDIA 470, students engage in human-centered design techniques, such as Persona and other psycho demographic tools, to create user or customer journeys, and use storyboarding as a tool.
Students partake in activities that allow them to experience what it is like to collaborate together on something, and that activity can be as simple as passing a ball around in a circle. In this activity the students work in teams to find ways to pass the given ball within their teams within the given time such as 45 seconds. With every round that the teams successfully complete, the stakes keep rising as the given time keeps reducing. The students think together and come up with ways to beat the clock, sometimes by creatively interpreting the rules and sometimes by bending them.
Students reflect and self-reflect at multiple stages: when developing a piece of emerging technology, the instructor plans a series of activities once students identify a problem, where they self-reflect to determine the skill sets of the team members, and assess their own willingness to learn new skills that may be required for the project. Students are expected to rationally plot out what they are able to do over short periods of time, and can learn to use Agile to scope out what they can achieve during the course in terms of development of their project. Students are assigned targeted reflection activities weekly so that students’ knowledge of co-constructing a project together is scaffolded over time.
Students explore root cause visual models to get to the root of the problem that they are trying to solve (students often find this activity challenging). The activity can be enhanced with an LLM like Chat GPT-4 to reinforce that there may be several roots of a problem.
To create emerging technology, students must become comfortable with the need to iterate and improve upon their project. Thus, students learn to prototype throughout the course, creating versions of something in process until ultimately creating a set of low fidelity prototypes.
Grading
Students are given feedback based on their contribution to class discussions and how well they follow instructions or provide reflections.
Students are required to complete weekly reflective activities and occasional peer assessments. The instructor assesses the accuracy of these self-assessments and can also provide feedback to help students re-evaluate their self-assessment if they have been hypercritical of themselves contrary to the opinion of their teammates.
Overall, the instructor grades are based on iterative assessment: a rubric of specific competencies (for example, potential to communicate with others and the evidence of that communication) is available for every assignment and students have the opportunity to improve and resubmit for every submission except for the final project.
Discussion
What did students share about their experience with the Practical Learning activities?
There are varying degrees of learner-responses and outcomes in all project-based courses that I teach. Many are not familiar with developing the design skills and competencies they experience, and less are used to working with others. However, towards the conclusion of the course, most students are satisfied, and some, more than others, have embodied a way of creating work that is going to have lasting resonance. They learn to how to collaborate, and also learn about their affinity towards this way of working, which is an important outcome of the course. Most of the comments about the course reflect that students consider the experience of co-constructing something with others valuable, they have increased their skills, and they have better understood what they may need to learn to be successful in a particular industry.
Student responses to learning in this way fall within various fluid categories:
Initial resistance and confusion to some course content, assignments, and course direction
Habitual learning pattern of needing to be told what to do
Understanding that learning can also be fun and openness to learning from others
Lack of experience in documenting self-reflection
Giving and listening to feedback from their peers
Slow acceptance of their own creative competencies
Managing communication in team-based work over time
Becoming aware of their own heuristics or their own rules of play around identifying and solving problems
Radical transformation of how they learn that influences the remainder of their learning journey
“Practical learning for me is engaging in the practice of applying craft, technique and skill to projects that are intended to improve specific competencies. Those competencies are connected to collaborating, communicating, problem-solving, developing criticality and managing creativity with others over time.”
Dr. Patrick Parra Pennefather
Assistant Professor, Design and Production, Department of Theatre and Film
What are some changes or improvements which you wish to include in future?
Availability of computing resources for students is a persistent problem. I think that these resources are necessary for students, and I need more of those for my students, so I am always trying to find funding or partnerships within the university and externally. I also want more time with students, more than a 3-credit course. I have taught 12-credit courses in a single semester at another university, which are intense and beneficial to students, helping them grow quicker. More time to engage with content and to work with and learn from one another would support and reinforce competencies associated with the course.
Do you have any suggestions for instructors considering this Practical Learning for their course?
Anyone who teaches project-based courses should have the commitment to learn and to facilitate others to learn. You need to be actively interested in the community of practice associated with what you are teaching. If I am teaching about VR, I need to understand what the latest tools are and keep up with the technology. You also need to maintain a connection to that industry to be able to invite them to teach. Many of my students are embedded in the digital media industry who I bring into my classes. They have more specific and direct knowledge, and insights which I would not possibly have. It is important to give students this exposure.
Instructors need to understand that a project-based course will shift, change, and need to adapt to the unique characteristics of learners in the course. An openness to shifting direction, slowing down, accelerating sometimes, going beyond what is written in a course outline is essential, so is communicating at the beginning of the course that that may happen. In addition:
Being reflective at the end of each course
Facilitating learning vs trying hard to teach students something.
Learning from teaching
Seeing each learner that you teach as someone who comes to your class with knowledge
Respecting differences in learning and affirming those differences
Facilitating learners to participate in the co-creation of class values and rules of play during the first class that will govern how learners interact with one another and course content.
Being clear how learners will be assessed and drawing from the rich history of project-based learning to identify competencies that can be assessed and how students can demonstrate these.
Involve students in providing you persistent feedback so that you too can improve your offering to them
Do you wish to share anything further?
I am passionate about this kind of learning and there are so many benefits. I would just encourage those who are considering it that it is a rewarding path to go down. The best thing to do is to try it to see if it works for you. If anyone wants to learn more about my methodological approach to designing project-based interactions informed by social constructivism, I have recently published a book called Mentoring Digital Media Projects.
Katherine Lyon, Assistant Professor of Teaching in the Department of Sociology shares her recipe for integrating collaborative and community engaged learning strategies in her Sociology 290 class.
Overview
SOCI 290, Global Pandemics, is a second-year Sociology course that explores the subfield of disaster studies. Students examine the ways social inequalities affect groups’ abilities to anticipate, cope with, and recover from disasters. In 2023, SOCI 290 focused on COVID-19, as well as historical pandemics and other types of disasters that intersect with pandemics, including the climate crisis.
Dr. Katherine Lyon Assistant Professor of Teaching, Department of Sociology
As part of the course, students collaborate in teams to complete a Community Partner Interview Synthesis. Each team interviews a non-profit organization that has supported vulnerable communities in responding to and recovering from COVID-19 or other disasters. Each team produces a public-facing report or media artifact explaining the relevant societal challenges presented by the disaster and the ways in which the organization seeks to address these challenges. Final assignments are delivered to partner organizations who may draw upon this work for their media promotion or grant writing.
The assignment was designed in collaboration with Tamara Baldwin and Gaylean Davies from the UBC Office of Regional & International Community Engagement (ORICE). ORICE helped to identify and connect with appropriate community organizations whose work aligned with the learning goals of the assignment and had interest and capacity to engage with UBC students. ORICE also provided pedagogical and administrative support for the assignment during and after the course.
Goals & Objectives
The activity utilizes both collaborative pedagogies and community engaged learning (CEL). It provides an important opportunity for students to apply course concepts outside of the classroom where their work can have a broader impact. Addressing complex societal topics such as pandemic response requires multidisciplinary collaboration. Students must think beyond their own training, translate their disciplinary knowledge for broader audiences, and engage empathetically with a variety of perspectives. Within each team, students must come to consensus on decisions and organize shared tasks. This collaborative and applied learning is reinforced across several different activities throughout the course in addition to the community partner assignment.
Objectives
Gain an applied understanding of concepts from disaster studies
Build appreciation for the work of a non-profit organization that supports vulnerable communities in disaster contexts
Develop a deeper understanding of the social complexities of the disaster in question
Interact in a team to identify and equitably divide up tasks, set internal deadlines, and collaboratively produce a cohesive final product
Practice writing a concise, evidence-based analysis for an educated public audience
Become familiar with journals that publish disaster-related research in the social sciences
Students are first given descriptions of the 15 different community partners selected by ORICE. Students then vote on their top three community partners and are organized into groups based on their preference.
Students meet in their groups to pick a platform for communication and develop a set of tasks to divide the work out for the assignment. The instructor provides guidance on selecting platforms for communication and collaboration.
Students are given class time to meet with their group, conduct further research on their community partner organization, and develop a set of interview questions which they will ask their community partner over a phone call or Zoom meeting.
Groups submit their initial interview questions through Canvas. The instructor works with ORICE to give feedback on the draft questions.
Students revise the questions based on the feedback they receive.
Conducting and summarizing the interview
The group then elects a communication lead who is the one responsible for coordinating with the community partner. The communication lead schedules an interview time with the partner.
Students meet with the community partner and take notes to capture the partner responses to the interview questions.
Following the interview, students collaborate to create a shared set of notes from the interview.
Final report and assessment
Using the notes from the interview, students create a final report that includes a summary of the interview synthesized with academic literature. Student teams determine the format of the final report in collaboration with the community partner. Some teams produced infographics or videos that community partners could use on social media. Other teams created a more traditional report that community partners may draw upon for grant writing purposes.
After submitting the final report, students complete a self and peer assessment using iPeer to reflect on their peers and their own contributions to the group process.
Once the final projects have been submitted, the instructor and ORICE work together to select the ones that will be given back to the community partners.
Grading
The assignment is worth approximately 15% of the total grade. The weight of the assignment relative to the overall course grade was made to be a balance between not making it worth so much that students would become stressed yet giving it enough value, that students would take it seriously and reflect the amount of work involved for students.
Potential Modifications
Provide a more explicit division of roles and responsibilities for group members to complete the various elements of the assignment. Students could sign up for their specific piece so that it was clear to all students what their responsibilities were. This could help to address some of the student feedback around challenges regarding workload distribution and unequal participation.
Make improvements to group formation by making sure that all students indicate their preferences for mode of collaboration (working online or in-person) to make sure all students in a group wanted to engage with the activity in the same way.
There is potential to integrate a two-stage reflection assignment, with one midway through the term and another at the end of the term to help students reflect on what they learned through the activity and how it integrates with other concepts in the course.
Another potential modification would be to have students submit some elements of the assignment individually and some as a full group to be able to assess student contributions more fairly. It may also be possible to have students develop the interview questions and conduct the interview as a group, but then complete the final report individually.
In which course did you use collaborative learning? What is the general nature of the course and how many students are generally in the course?
“Global Pandemics” (SOCI 290) is a second-year course, which I taught in 2023. It has no prerequisite, so about 70% of the students were from Arts, and the remaining were from other Faculties. This course explores the subfield of disaster studies. We focus on the idea of social vulnerability and specifically how social inequalities shape social groups’ capacity to anticipate a disaster, to cope with it as it is happening, and recover from it. We study COVID-19, as well as historical pandemics and other types of disasters that intersect with pandemics, such as the climate crisis, the opioid crisis, gender-based violence, and settler colonialism.
What does collaborative learning mean in your discipline/course? Why do you incorporate collaborative learning? What outcomes were you hoping to achieve?
Disaster studies is an evolving field that necessitates multidisciplinary collaboration and knowledge translation. It requires the ability to work with other people and think beyond your own training. There are numerous transferable skills beyond the explicit curriculum content that students obtain from pursuing an Arts degree, including empathizing with other’s perspectives, discussing and weighing arguments, and drawing evidence-based conclusions. I want to equip students with those skills, so I integrated collaborative learning into many components of the course. For example, every week we did a face-to-face case study in teams.
Please describe how the activity worked. What sequence of steps do students do to complete the final project? How did it fit into the overall structure of the course?
This assignment was designed in collaboration with Arts ISIT and UBC Office of Regional & International Community Engagement (ORICE). The first step is students reviewing 15 descriptions of our different community partners that were put together by ORICE. Each one-page write-up provides information including what the community partner does, what they are looking for in the final student report, and the details of how to have an interview with them. Each student indicates the top three community partners they would like to work with. Based on their preference, they are put into small groups and given their group assignments. I also ask the students to come up with a set of tasks to divide the group work, and to pick a platform for communication.
Once the students receive their group assignments, they meet with their peers in class and develop a set of interview questions which they will ask their community partner over a phone or Zoom call. A communications lead is also elected for the group, who will be the one coordinating with the community partner. This kind of outreach is new for many students, and they hone skills from it such as appropriate follow-up response, how quickly to respond, and what to emphasize more in future communications.
The next step was scheduling and holding the interview. The students collaborate on the notes from the interview and turn it into a final report. Every 2 weeks, 30 minutes of class was allocated for group work where the students could work together on this assignment.
What was your role as the instructor in the process? What types of structure and support did you provide to students?
A key piece was checking in with the groups every two weeks during dedicated class time. In addition, every group submitted in Canvas their initial interview questions, and I worked with ORICE to give them feedback on those questions, based on which they revised the interview questions. I also gave the students guidance on selecting a communication platform. They submitted their write-up on Canvas for feedback and afterward the students did self and peer assessment which also I reviewed. At the end, in addition to grading the assignments, I connected with ORICE to select the ones that would be given back to the community partners.
How did the activity work in terms of grading and feedback?
This assignment was worth 15% of the total grade. I made it a small amount to reduce team anxiety, particularly given the potential for group workload distribution issues. But on the flip side I got feedback that the assignment itself was a lot of work, and so it should have had more weight in the course. I will likely increase it to 20% of the total grade next time.
Did you have to deal with situations where students were concerned about their grade in relation to their contribution to the group work?
Midway through the term, I had one student approach me regarding their grades. We talked it through, I gave them some suggestions, and they felt that it had been resolved sufficiently and did not need me to make grade adjustments. At the group-level, the qualitative peer feedback which I reviewed indicated some tension about decision-making processes within two of the groups, but the quantitative peer feedback scores were relatively high. I did not pursue changing the grades for any student.
What learning benefits have you seen?
I think the biggest benefit is cultivating a concrete connection to the sometimes-abstract material–being able to meet someone who works in the field and realize what it means to support specific communities in relation to a particular disaster. The students were able to apply course concepts in their write-ups and analysis. They also engaged with external sources outside of the class, sharpening their library skills, literature searching skills, and synthesis skills to support their arguments.
The communication aspect, not only with their team members but with the community partners, was impactful in terms of the written initial communication, and then the oral communication during the interview.
Working in a team requires students to identify the tasks that need to be done and break them down ahead of time. Some students in a second-year course may not have mastered these skills for themselves on their own, so working in a team requires them to be more transparent and explicit with goal setting and delegation in a timely manner.
The students also benefited in terms of intended audience and knowledge translation as they considered what would be the perception of a community partner and any reader who may not have a sociology background. They produced reports with accessible language that needed to be nuanced with underlying themes and concepts relating to published research.
I could also see that a comfort level was emerging in the class, friendships were starting, and there was a lot more chatter towards the end of the term as compared to the beginning. However, the course was multi-access, meaning students could participate face-to-face or online, which affected some group dynamics. This is a key component of the assignment structure that I will revise next time.
Did you run into any problems with the multi-access nature of the class?
I would email the class beforehand and specify that there will be dedicated teamwork time during the upcoming class. I suggested that the groups organize a Zoom meeting during that time, if any of their members preferred to do it online. There were students who were doing the online version actively and staying up to date, but there were others who were quite absent, and this had an effect on the experience of other members of those students’ groups. Next time I will ensure students are matched in teams with other students who intend to participate in the same way (either online or face-to-face).
What feedback did students share about their experience with the Collaborative Learning activities?
I think that what stood out for me was the frustration among students regarding workload distribution, feeling that they had done more work than someone else and still got the same grade, or feeling that their voice was not heard in the team. The course was without prerequisites so you have students from many different faculties talking about disasters in different ways, which could be beneficial for the group in terms of voicing your opinion or building respect for unique perspectives, but it also presented some barriers.
The students also talked about challenges of finding time to work together, which was surprising, because they were given class time, but this may have been due to the multi-access nature of the course with some students doing it remotely.
What are some changes or improvements which you wish to include in future?
I could impose a more explicit division of labour for creating the pieces of the assignment, and I could have students formally sign up for their specific piece so that I, as well as the group members, are aware of the tasks undertaken by each student. I could have them submit their work individually and also as a team so I could assess it. I am considering having students come up with the interview questions and do the interview in groups, and then do the reports individually.
Group formation is another component I intend to improve. In the first two weeks of the organizing the students in teams, I had to move a couple of people around, and if someone did not sign up for a community partner, they got placed into a group by default. The next time if a student is not responsive, I will wait until I hear from them before adding them to a group. Also, as I mentioned earlier, finding time to work together was difficult for some groups with some of their members doing the assignment online, so I would make sure that students in the same groups wanted to engage with the class in the same way.
I may also consider including a two-stage reflection assignment–one midway through the term so that students could benefit in the moment, and another at the end of the term so students could reflect on the takeaways.
What are your primary suggestions for the instructors about coordinating interaction between students and community partners? Are there ways that you feel a community partner could have been more involved?
I think that community-engaged learning at a second-year level is considerably different than at a third- and fourth-year level. The community-facing outputs of second-year students are generally not as robust as fourth-year students, for example. Given this, ORICE and I tried to have minimal time demands from the community partners. Each partner was responsible for having initial planning conversations with ORICE, contributing to a one-page write-up where they outlined their expectations for the assignment, and participating in the student interview. I am sure it would be useful to have more input from community partners about the assignment structure and progress, and but I feel cautious about this in terms of draining their time. I would also suggest that if instructors do not have long-standing relationships with the community partners, they should reach out to ORICE or CCEL the first time. Both these centres offer pedagogical guidance and have built long term relationships with community organizations. They can match you with suitable community partners and support the relationship before, during, and after the course.
Do you wish to share anything further?
I think that student motivation is important for community-engaged learning (CEL). CEL requires students who really want to be there. Whenever possible, I suggest making CEL an optional course component and providing students with choices about which community partners they are most interested in working with.
Connect Arts’ disciplinary learning to students’ futures—help students see how classroom learning can be applied in other contexts, including workplaces and the community.
By integrating practical learning and connections with alumni in the classroom, you connect course concepts and professional skills, helping your students build toward their futures.
Our team offers a collaborative, interdisciplinary support for Arts faculty members interested in exploring and designing discipline-specific learning experiences:
Arts Alumni Engagement
Arts Instructional Support
Arts Work Integrated Education
Centre for Teaching Learning and Technology
entrepreneurship@UBC
UBC Career Centre
We bring experience and contacts with alumni and professionals working across various sectors and roles inside and outside UBC, offering you an easy starting point for curricular innovation.
Integrating practical learning into the classroom makes the impacts accessible to all students.
Enriched learning
Enriches the learning and understanding of course concepts and helps students achieve course and program learning outcomes.
Student recruitment
Practical learning attracts students to your discipline and helps them see how they might leverage their classroom learning to build meaningful lives after graduation.
Why practical learning matters
The 2022 10+ Year-Out UBC Faculty of Arts Alumni Survey suggests that alumni wish they had been better equipped to communicate their skills and the strengths of their Arts major and degree when they graduated.
Questions our interdisciplinary team can help address include:
Activities for engaging alumni and practical assignments
How might I engage alumni in course activities?
How might I develop student workplace competencies (teamwork, presentation skills, articulating disciplinary skills, peer to peer learning)?
How might I introduce students to design thinking for degree and future planning?
How might I include entrepreneurial thinking tools in my course that are values aligned with Arts students?
Support for curriculum and program renewal
How might we purposefully enhance student competencies and transferrable skills in our program/major?
How might I bring disciplinary-linked experiential learning into our program/major?
How might we include capstones in our program/major?
How might I apply for funding to support…?
Teaching and learning technological tools
ePortfolios: provide a platform for students to illustrate connections between experiences outside of the classroom and course concepts.
UBC Blogs: a simple and creative way for students to share their work and demonstrate their learning publicly
Reflective activities: journaling or collaborative reflection assignments allows students to articulate and explore the real-world application of academic concepts
Customized career-building workshops
Examples include Telling the Story of Your Arts Degree in a Job Search and Job Search Skills with an Arts degree
Examples include workshops on using entrepreneurial methods, such as making a pitch, to define your unique value and communicate to diverse audiences
Teaching and learning funding applications
Examples include TLEFs, SoTL, or other teaching and learning related funding when practical/career learning/alumni component is being considered
Contact us
Book an initial 30-minute consultation with an educational designer to get support.
Explore how students are partnered with on-campus groups or community partners to build relationships and enhance their learning.
Overview
Kerry Greer, Associate Professor of Teaching, Department of Sociology
Students are partnered with on-campus groups at UBC or community partners to build relationships and either:
(1) reflect on practical, real-world skills needed in the workplace or;
(2) identify needs, then develop tools and methods to most effectively conduct research in the real-world.
Goals & Objectives
Students will be able to make the connection between classroom learning and social dynamics and explain those connections while reflecting on the course material and social processes that they may have seen and experienced.
Objectives
Allow students to learn how civil society works within the context of addressing social problems and use that knowledge to inform their career paths
Provide opportunities for students to gain real-world experience using the skills that they had first developed in their courses
Recipe
Level of Difficulty: Medium-Hard
Courses: SOCI 100 “Introduction to Sociology”, SOCI 380 “Sociological Methods: Survey Research”, SOCI 480 “Urban Ethnographic Field School”
Number of Students: SOCI 100 & SOCI 380: Up to 150 students, SOCI 480: up to 28 students
Time: Up to 1 full course length
Delivery: In person
Keywords: student engagement, peer learning, community building
Instructions
Prep Work
Instructor seeks out community partners or units on-campus who would benefit from and be able to work with students. The selection of community partners is determined by the learning goals of the particular course.
For example, first-year students in Introduction to Sociology are encouraged to partner with schools, youth organizations, and other organizations that are addressing general aspects of social inequality, while students in the Urban Ethnographic Field School work with some community organizations located in high-poverty areas, and are addressing inequality through more complex strategies.
Method
Students are provided with the following opportunities to experience the practical aspects of industry and/or the professional world:
In SOCI 100: Students are given the option of participating in a community-based learning experience where they partner with a non-profit organization and spend two hours a week working with that organization in lieu of a traditional weekly discussion section. They write reflective accounts discussing their observations of the organization: how the organization works, who the clients are, how the organization serves the clients, and how the organization fits within the broader context of some of the topics that are discussed in class. The students also do an assignment in which they build an ePortfolio using the UBC Arts WordPress tool and are encouraged to regularly update it, which helps them in understanding how the activities and learning over the course of their student life build their professional skills.
In SOCI 380: Students learn foundational survey research skills in the classroom and apply those skills in collaboration with a UBC unit. Each student team is assigned a UBC unit to partner with, and develop a survey instrument that will allow the UBC unit to conduct the kind of research it identifies as being critical to its advancement. In the past, student teams have developed surveys for increasing the usage of the cultural assets at UBC, provided several AMS organizations with surveys to measure student attitudes, and worked on harm reduction initiatives to address addictive behaviour among students. Students learn to work on a team, collaborate with a partner organization, and use their emerging survey research skills to prepare a field-tested survey that is subsequently made available to their partners for use.
In SOCI 480/ ANTH 480: In this co-instructed intensive 6-credit course, students start the term with a Launch Lunch where they are introduced to their partner organizations over lunch. With a thematic focus on food security, students spend six weeks “in the field” working with their community partner while learning the advanced research method of ethnography during 12-hours per week of classroom-based instruction. At the end of the semester, students present their experiences at a mini conference where community partners and students come together to consolidate their learning and share their experiences. Through their experience working with community organizations and actively participating in the “goings on” at their placement, students gain insights into how the organization works, develop their communication skills, and gain a deep understanding of an advanced qualitative research method.
Grading
In SOCI 100: A substantial thirty percent of the grade is allocated to community engaged learning. This aligns with my interest in enabling students to apply concepts learned in class to real-world examples and reduce the emphasis on memorization of concepts or just being able to define them on an exam.
In SOCI 380: Students are regularly evaluated on their progress in developing their respective surveys, incorporating best-practices for survey design, and delivering their final survey to the UBC-unit. Throughout the course, students share their progress with their peers, who provide feedback and suggestions. Because students are working with a UBC-unit, students are also evaluated based on their level of professionalism in communication, meeting deadlines, and contributing to a team-based process.
In SOCI 480/ANTH 480: Students complete a series of ethnographic accounts, which are evaluated with the goal of developing students’ ability to write ethnographically. Additionally, students are expected to maintain a high-level of professionalism in working with their community partners, including communicating effectively and completing projects.
Discussion
In which other courses do you use Practical Learning and why do you incorporate it?
In the past, I have incorporated practical learning in SOCI 301 Sociology of Development and Under-development, where I had students produce infographics of concepts to demonstrate their learning, and the students had to present and explain those to their classmates. Even in my theory class I have had students write about theoretical ways of understanding contemporary phenomenon, which helps them engage with contemporary issues, and helps them appreciate the value of classical and contemporary theorists in providing insights into understanding our social world. In most of my courses, practical learning comes into play in some way; obviously, the ones that are hands-on, like working with community groups, have the most solid connection.
Broadly speaking, my pedagogical approach is to tie what students are learning in their courses to professional skill sets. I try to balance that goal with the purpose of the courses for the curriculum. For some courses it is easier to incorporate professional learning, I try to include practical aspects in most of my courses because I think that is it both necessary and a great strategy to give students a better learning experience.
What did students share about their experience?
From the student evaluations it is clear that practical learning is almost universally positive. The thing that keeps me going is when I hear from students, who are a year or two out, who say that the experience in my course is “the reason why I am where I am today.” This lets me know that the practical learning experiences are transformative. I want students to have those transformative moments, which is why I include practical learning, and doing it is giving the students what I think they need to transition from university to their careers.
What are some changes or improvements which you wish to include in the future?
My hope is to continue to build a laddered set of opportunities for practical learning within my department so that in the first-year students get an introduction to practical learning, and by their third and fourth year they are prepared to do deep dives into practical learning. But that requires a commitment of support from my department, and I am trying to build that culture in my department to achieve that. Incorporating more practical learning into courses needs to happen across the curriculum, so that all students have access to these opportunities. To achieve this, continued support from UBC is needed.
Do you have any suggestions for instructors considering Practical Learning for their course?
I would suggest starting in the space that you are comfortable in. Start small with having students do a portfolio or having assignments that connect them to communities. Management of all the moving parts requires a lot of practice—and a willingness to make mistakes–so try to get good support, like having TAs who understand what you are trying to do, and the support of your department head. Support is critical. Connect with the staff at UBC who can guide you through the support that UBC provides. For me, early conversations with Julie Walchli have helped me a lot in charting a map, starting at the point of figuring out how to get art students more involved with the existing resources the university already has.
