03/02 Maker Faire & Collaboration Project

1. Maker Faire

We'll do the Maker Faire presentations the same way as the Tools Faire. You'll take turns to present in breakout rooms. 3-4 minutes for each with 1-2 minutes Q&A.

• Breakout Room 1: Abby, Lety, Brynne, Davia, Heymish, Jenna, Sophie, Tye

• Breakout Room 2: Abi, Emmie, Dennis, Elena, Ella, Isabella, Max, Smael

Late pass opportunity: We need a facilitator for each group to keep the presentations going smoothly.

2. Debrief of Reading/listening responses

Why/when to collaborate:

• Elena: assignment that requires different academic strengths to fully complete and comprehend material

• Emmie: As much as students like independent work so they can depend on themselves, sometimes life is just not like that.

• Ella: individuals are working together leads to higher thinking levels, better understanding of the content

• Davia: Group work also engages students and can motivate them to perform better when they know their individual grades are dependent on their group’s performance.

• Jenna: it allows students to still make connections with each other and to share ideas and help each other learn.

Challenges:

• Elena: power dynamics sometimes can be tricky as well in groups

• Davia: Assessment

• scheduling, time commitment

• disconnectedness, no in-person interaction

• accountability issues

For online collaboration:

• Dennis: Students might have "barrier" that can make them seemingly invisible; ensure students are not hiding behind an empty/ muted computer

• Ella: redesign their course in a “tech friendly” manner and to ensure that the students have enough collaboration time.

• Sophie: provide a variety of different collaborative experiences.

• Jenna: pay special attention to all of the tools and programs that are available to implement into virtual cooperative learning

• Isabella: focusing on the interactiveness of the student... finding ways to keep face to face contact alive by using tools such as breakout rooms, and polls is important to keep students engaged.

• Abby: be respectful of other people and make sure to respond to them and communicate well.

3. Q sort Discussion

Based on the results of the Q sort activity last week, there are three distinct types of opinions related to frustrations in online collaboration. Now you'll have a group discussion with those who share similar viewpoints:

• Group 1: Brynne, Sophie, Abby, Dennis

• Group 2: Jenna, Elena, Emmie, Tye, Isabella

• Group 3: Ella, Abi, Davia

We'll do this breakout rooms with Book Creator because this will be the tool to use for our very first group project. Join our class library on Book Creator with the code: SJW25PC. Take a few minutes to explore the basic features of Book Creator and leave your own responses in designated pages. Then you discuss your thoughts with your group members.

1. What similarities do your group share in terms of online collaboration, based on the composite Q sort?

2. What are some of the strategies to overcome these issues you care about most in collaboration?

3. How do you like the Q sort activity? What have you learned from it?

You will be provided with a composite Q sort, which represents the "average" viewpoints of your group. You need pay more attention to the most frustrating and least frustrating statements as well as those marked with the following legends:

4. Online Collaborative Learning Activity Book Project

Let's call it the "Book Project" for short. This book is intended for any teachers (K-12 or higher ed) who are looking for resources to create effective online collaboration activities. You are going to work in groups of 2 or 3 to develop an age-appropriate subject-based activity plan for a collaborative learning task in an online learning environment. You will explore Book Creator and write down your detailed online collaboration plan on this platform. Create a free account and join as a student (not as a teacher). Then Join our class library on Book Creator with the code: SJW25PC

When you are choosing the topic and form of collaboration, it’s important to bear in mind that an online collaborative learning task should be complex enough to require more than one student to complete it and it should be well-designed enough to be implemented effectively. For the book project, you should consider designing a group activity that students will be grades on based on their learning (and not just a participation grade). This means an informal Zoom breakout group discussion or an eLC discussion board activity would be too "small" for this project, in terms of its scope. More appropriate types of collaboration would be long-term group-projects, jigsaw, collaborative problem-solving, collaborative writing, etc.

Group meet-up and brainstorming:

1. What are the best means to communicate with each other? (You have a private group channel on Slack for you to communicate with each other)

2. What are times available for everyone to meet out of class?

3. What topic would you like to work on? Check out Georgia Performance Standards to get some ideas.

4. What type of online collaboration activity would be appropriate for this topic?

Homework

1. Book Project Draft due next Thursday, 03/11 at 11: 00 am. ( You'll have in-class group work time in Tuesday's (03/09) class meeting). Meet with your teammates as early as possibly.

View the project instructions I created on Book Creator.

2. Late pass opportunity (Valid through 03/16):

• Option A: Volunteer for a 30-minute follow-up interview of the Q sort activity to have a further conversation about online collaboration. Send a direct message to me if you are interested.

• Option B: This is a non-research option. Write a 500-word piece describing your best and/or worst online collaborative learning experiences. Send it to me on Slack.