Educational research has demonstrated the importance of discussion for student learning federal agencies such as the National Science Foundation and the US Department of Education as well as private organizations such as the Carnegie Foundation have issued reports that recommend the adoption of collaborative and cooperative learning strategies in the classroom. In the early 990s at the University of Delaware several faculty members in the sciences began to adopt problem-based learning in their undergraduate classrooms. This form of active collaborative learning evolved in medical schools where expert clinical or academic faculty instructors guided or tutored one relatively small group of six to 12 students at a time. This model needed to be adapted to the undergraduate setting with its larger classes and younger more academically diverse students. One strategy for monitoring multiple groups in the problem-based learning classroom has general features that should work for all collaborative learning settings. The instructor walks around the classroom looking and listening for signs that the groups are engaged and on track and that all members are participants in the group discussion. The roving instructor may also enter into discussions pose questions or otherwise focus on particular groups for a short period of time. This strategy is particularly effective if the PBL problems are constructed so that instructor-led whole-class discussions can be inserted at key intervals in the problem resolving process. Groups can then compare notes on each other's progress and the instructor can simultaneously give all groups essential feedback and guidance. Another model growing in popularity has been to enlist the help of other undergraduates to serve as peer or near peer facilitators. That is students who have completed a course and done well return to work in the PBL classroom as group facilitators. They can serve as a dedicated facilitator for a single classroom group or as a roving facilitator along with the faculty instructor. The use of peer facilitators has proved to be an excellent model for enhancing the effectiveness of classroom groups and is a model that can be extended to active learning activities other than problem-based learning. The peer facilitators well familiar with the course material are not expected to be experts or to grade the students they guide to prepare and a system the University of Delaware offers a course tutorial methods of instruction in which undergraduates discover ways to facilitate learning in groups. One of the things they must do is recognize certain patterns of individual and group behavior that can undermine group effectiveness and learn ways by which these situations can be avoided minimized or resolved. The following 12 vignettes portray unresolved situations that can arise in groups. Each deals with one or more issues in the tutorial methods of instructions course the videos provide a launching point for class discussion about the causes of various behaviors and how to deal with them. Most of the scenarios were written by peer facilitators as teaching cases and later scripted. The situations are fictionalized and dramatized versions of personal experiences in most cases. While the original intent of these videos was for training peer facilitators in problem-based learning groups. They may be used to facilitate group function in a variety of other collaborative and cooperative learning settings
01 introduction.mp4
From Phil Duker October 25, 2019
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