Choosing and Using Group Activities in the College Classroom

Group learning does work. Here’s how.

Let’s divide into groups.

Do your students groan when you utter those words?

For years, group work in higher education had a bad reputation for being frustrating and unfair. Quieter students often felt steamrolled. More assertive students did too much of the work. And the disengaged rode the coattails of more dedicated classmates to decent grades on assignments and projects to which they contributed little.

It wasn’t much better for instructors, who struggled with structuring assignments and evaluating student work when it wasn’t always evident who pulled their weight and who didn’t. But you cant lecture all the time.

Practical career skills—such as the ability to collaborate with a team—are becoming increasingly important.

In addition to teaching course content, instructors now must help prepare students for their careers. Group work has become essential. The challenge is doing it right.

That’s why you need Choosing and Using Group Activities in the College Classroom. This Magna 40-Minute Seminar presents three different categories of group work and shows you how to determine which approach is best for your campus, your courses, and your students.

Learning Goals

Choosing and Using Group Activities in the College Classroom changes the way you perceive and use group activities. In just 40 minutes, you learn how to identify appropriate techniques and apply them to your courses. And after this seminar, you will be able to:

• Describe different approaches to small group learning
• List specific techniques associated with the different types of group learning
• Choose a group learning approach that is consistent with your own teaching goals and objectives
• Identify specific techniques to use in your own classes
• Choose a plan for assessing students’ learning that is consistent with the instructional approach

Topics Covered

Participants learn about several different forms of small group learning currently used in the college classroom, including collaborative learning, cooperative learning, and peer learning. They become familiar with the goals, essential features, and elements of each form. Finally, participants learn about assessment techniques that are consistent with each form of small group learning.

The knowledge participants gain during this seminar prepares them to select the form of small group learning that best fits their disciplines and learning environments.

More specifically, participants learn to:

• Consider the goals of different types of group work
• Determine whether the goals of the group learning approach are consistent with their own instructional goals
• Use the size of the class, the level of the students, and other factors to choose a form of group learning that will work in your classroom
• Accurately assess student work

In this Magna 40-Minute Seminar, you learn about the various forms of small group work so you can choose and use the approach best for your classes.

Audience

This online seminar will help instructors at all kinds of colleges and universities choose the methods that will work best for their students and their courses.

Choosing and Using Group Activities in the College Classroom is particularly useful for:

• Faculty
• Adjunct faculty
• Department chairs
• Teaching center staff
• Lecturers
• Graduate teaching assistants

Purchase

Order this seminar today. As higher education evolves both in how it is delivered and in our expectations of it, group work is becoming more recognized as a valuable instructional method.

Product Code: PC15LA