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Goals for these ARQ workshops
When a course relies even in part on
discussion or collaboration, the learning of every
student is diminished when any student doesn't take part
in the collaboration. The goal of this workshop is to
help faculty members
learn how to discover and then lower barriers that
limit or prevent the full participation of some of their
students. The method: a quick survey of your students.
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The "big idea": Many people assume that, when gathering
feedback or doing research, a large problem (symptom)
must have a single, large cause; therefore (they assume) a problem that faces
only one or two students must be unimportant.
That's not always so. sometimes 20 people can have the
same symptom (in this case, inadequate participation
online), but each one for a different reason. So, to
deal with one symptom, may require helping different
people in different ways. Fortunately, sometimes,
simply discovering the problem is more than half the
effort needed to solve it.
Preparation for
workshop facilitator:
-
Read this
brief chapter of the Flashlight Evaluation Handbook.
-
If you haven't done so already, do
the workshop for yourself. Experiment
with the Flashlight template in a course you teach (or
do an imaginary experiment if you don't currently teach
a course). What items would you
use? Why? When?
-
How much need is there for this
workshop? Because the workshop is
so short, and so easy to run, you can offer it to only a
handful of faculty. But it might be worth finding out
just how much need there is. Interview or survey
academic staff at your department or institution, asking
them a) whether they assign online discussions or
teamwork, b) if so, what participation rates are
typical, and c) whether they'd like help in increasing
and improving student participation. If your questions
appear in an institution-wide survey about faculty
support needs, be sure to ask what department the
respondent is in, so you can offer your first workshops
in departments where the desire for assistance is
greatest.
-
Set the schedule.
Task 1 is best done as homework (perhaps after a brief
face-to-face introduction to get people interested.)
Tasks 2-4 can be done together, or as separate brief
workshops, each 5 minutes or less (e.g., as agenda items
in a series of departmental faculty meetings). Tasks 5
and 6 will often be done by faculty working alone. Task
6A could be done as a separate brief workshop.
Task 7 can also be a brief workshop.
-
Saving time: Note that
the
more people in your group, the longer it takes to do a
task, usually. If the workshop involves more than, say,
five faculty, you can shorten the workshop by breaking
participants into small groups. Keep "reporting out" to
a minimum or eliminate it in order to save more time.
-
Prepare paper handouts for
participants. Print this
item bank of such
questions is available in Flashlight Online 2.0; if
the item bank ("Diagnosing Barriers to Online Discussion
and Collaboration Among Students") is not already on
your Flashlight Online survey list, email your local TLT
Group contact and ask to share it.
-
Decide what degree of use of
Flashlight Online is appropriate for your participants.
None? (Then use the paper forms only, and encourage them
to decide how they would administer their own
adaptations: on paper? using some online system?). Or
would you like to help them use Flashlight Online
because the item bank is already in that system? (Then
arrange for some or all participants to have accounts
and an initial workshop in how to use them; make sure
all participating authors have access to the item bank
before the workshop begins. If you don't have the item
bank and the rights to share it with others, contact
flashlight @ tltgroup.org and ask for access to
"Lowering barriers to online discussion" item bank.)
-
Optional: If your institution is not a
Comprehensive or Network subscriber, you may want to copy the template questions into another
survey system that your colleagues use so that they can
experiment on their own as soon as your workshop ends
(or during your workshop).
-
If you want people to practice creating
real surveys during the workshop, schedule a computer
classroom or ask potential participants to bring
laptops; they could pair up with colleagues who don't
have accounts.
Introduction
to workshop [this text can also be used to publicize the
workshop]:
In your courses do you ever ask students to engage in online
discussion? to work on homework or other projects together
online? Do all of your students participate
effectively in these online interactions? 80% 50% fewer? If
the figure is less than 100%, that can be a problem for all
your students, since every student can potentially benefit
from the participation of each student. And we know from
research, that collaboration among students usually improves
learning.
"The goal of this brief workshop [or series
of workshops] is to help
you learn how to increase that participation rate by using
feedback to identify barriers that are slowing or blocking
student participation in online discussion and
collaboration."
Workshop Web
site (steps for participants) |
