Why collaboration:
-     promotes argumentation and consensus-building
-     improves thinking through practice of hypothesizing, seeking reasoned consensus
-     helps students generate ideas for and incorporate course content in writing assignments
-     helps students revise drafts of writing assignments
-     promotes student interaction and friendships; builds leadership skills
-     celebrates diversity

Possible tasks:

1. Problem-posing strategy: instructor gives students a disciplinary problem framed as an open-ended question to which students must propose and justify an answer. Groups may summarize answer in one sentence which they write on the chalkboard.

2. Question-generating strategy: teacher breaks students into groups and has them brainstorm possible questions related to topics s/he provides. Students then refine their lists into the two or three best questions and explain why each question is a good one.

3. Believing and doubting strategy: (coined by Peter Elbow) students first enter imaginatively into the possible truth of any statement, arguing in its favor (believing) and then stand back from it, adopting a healthy skepticism (doubting). With small groups, teacher gives students a controversial thesis and asks them to generate reasons and supporting arguments for and against the thesis.

4. Evidence-finding strategy: goal is to have students find facts, figures, and other data or evidence to support a premise. It may mean using data from library, lab or field research. Teaches students how experts in a field use discipline appropriate evidence to support assertions.

5. Case strategy: devise cases that require group decision-making and justification. If a case involves different roles, each group can initially be assigned one or two of the roles and devise best arguments.

6. Rough draft workshop strategy: students read and respond to each other's work in progress, with the goal of stimulating global revision of drafts to improve ideas, organization, development.
 

Making small groups work:

1. Kenneth Bruffee's review of research on small groups indicates that the best size of classroom consensus groups is 5 students. Groups larger than 5 or 6 are unwieldy.

2. If you use groups only occasionally, standard method is to divide number of students by size of groups and have students count off by that number. When you use groups extensively, it is often a good idea to form permanent or semi-permanent groups that can establish bonds among their members.

3. Decentralize leadership by asking groups to select a recorder and a checker for each task, rotating the roles regularly. The recorder's job is to make the report to the whole class and direct the discussions toward the ideas at hand. The checker makes sure everyone contributes.

(ideas adapted from John C. Bean's Engaging Ideas: The Professor's Guide to Integrating Writing, Critical Thinking, and Active Learning in the Classroom)
 

                                                                                                                            Lani Uyeno