Working with Groups
- Puzzled About Teams
This handbook has been developed as a resource for you. Separately, each piece focuses on a specific aspect of collaboration. Taken as a whole, the pieces can help you develop the collaborative skills you will need to succeed in the academic, professional and social worlds. You can begin by looking at the introduction and reading each section, or tailor the handbook to your individual needs by heading straight to a specific area.
- Commonly
Asked Questions about Teaching Collaborative Activities
Answers to how to divide students into groups, deal with conflict, grading, and much more...
- Building Blocks For Teams
Penn State’s Teaching and Learning with Technology website offers tips to both instructors and students on how to build effective teams and utilize a variety of Penn State technology services to get the most out of your team-learning experience.
- Managing Groups to Promote Thinking and Writing
Dr. Jessica O’Hare from the Penn State’s Center for Excellence in Writing has provided this handout during her "Tea Topic" discussion group on Managing Groups to Promote Thinking and Writing. Topics in this handout include setting up groups, keeping them focused, and examples of types of group assignments.
- The Penn State Teacher II, pages 54-67
"Teaching with Collaborative Activities and Small Groups" provides advice on working in groups, as well as personal reflections of Penn State staff and students on group learning activities.
- iStudy Modules for Teams and Groups
These have been designed to work from within ANGEL. Modules import quickly and easily into existing ANGEL courses and groups.
- Working in Teams
Penn State students in the College of Information Sciences and Technology are often required to participate in team-learning activities. Therefore, IST has created this website to provide students with tips on how to work effectively in groups and a personal contact that fields questions regarding team-based learning. Instructors will also find guidelines and additional web resources for effectively using group work.
- Rubrics, Penn State Video Taping Services, and Podcasts at Penn State
Providing grading rubrics to students early in the group-work process is a good way to clarify your expectations of the group’s final product. If the group’s final product is a presentation, instructors can utilize Penn State’s video taping services or the Podcasting Initiative as ways to share examples of satisfactory and exemplary work from previous classes.
- University of Oklahoma Team-based Learning Website
This site includes articles by Dr. Larry Michaelsen on working with groups and creating effective group assignments. Also, you can find a collection of in-class video demonstrations of effective strategies in action, and a variety of discipline-specific examples of successful team-based learning activities.
- Assessing Learning in Australian Universities - Assessing Group Work
This resource for instructors includes how to design group activities that work, how to assess an individual’s contribution to a group project, and how to incorporate peer and self-evaluations into assessments. This work is published by The Centre for the Study of Higher Education, and is part of their Five Practical Guides series on assessment.
Additional readings on using collaborative/group learning activities:
- Bruffee, K.A. (1994). Collaborative learning: Higher education, interdependence, and the authority of knowledge. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
- Bosworth, K., and Hamilton, S.J. (1994). Collaborative Learning: Underlying Processes and Effective Techniques. New Directions for Teaching and Learning, 59, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
- Cramer, S.F. (1994). Assessing effectiveness in the collaborative classroom. In Bosworth and Hamilton, eds. Collaborative Learning: Underlying Processes and Effective Techniques. New Directions for Teaching and Learning, 59, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
- Michealson, L.K. (1983). Team Learning in Large Classes. In Bouton and Garth, eds. Learning in groups. New Directions for Teaching and Learning, 14, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
