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The Transform your Teaching podcast is a service of the Center for Teaching and Learning at Cedarville University in Cedarville, Ohio. Join Dr. Rob McDole and Dr. Jared Pyles as they seek to inspire higher education faculty to adopt innovative teaching and learning practices.
There's never a time in my Cedarville experience where I haven't been working on a group project. Do I like them? Not exactly. Do I think they're helpful? Yes.
Lauren:I do learn well when I'm able to bounce ideas off of other people.
Narrator:This is the Transform Your Teaching Podcast. The Transform Your Teaching Podcast is a service of the Center for Teaching and Learning at Cedarville University in Cedarville, Ohio.
Ryan:Hello, and welcome to the Transform Your Teaching Podcast. In today's episode, Doctor. Jared Pyles and Doctor. Rob McDole chat with two students to get their perspective on some educational best practices. Thanks for listening.
Jared:Well, welcome guys to this episode. Thanks for being willing to come on. Rob, how are you?
Rob:I'm
Jared:well. That's good to hear. What I want you guys to
Ryan:do is just give us
Jared:your first names and what year you are here at Cedarville.
Daniel:I'm Daniel. I'm a sophomore.
Lauren:I'm Lauren, and I'm also a sophomore.
Jared:Alright. So here's the plan. Rob and I talk often about what's called best practices. So best practices are basically like what are the best strategies or methodologies to use to interact with students in your courses to help them learn the content and then show mastery on the assessment. So by the end of the course, they have mastered the content in the course and they can move on.
Jared:Those are called those are best practices. What I wanted to do is have students because we can sit in our research bubbles and say, research says this, research says that. But I wanted actual students to tell us whether or not these best practices actually work. Yep. So, you know, we're gonna have you guys, we're gonna throw some of these methodologies at you, some of these best practices, and we want to hear whether or not from you you think they're effective or not.
Jared:Does that sound easy enough? Cool. Yeah. We haven't told you these guys ahead of time. Nope.
Jared:Totally off the cuff because we want genuine reactions. So let me start. I can do that. Yes. You start.
Rob:So there's a phrase that gets used a lot in education, especially higher ed, well, in k through 12, called active learning. Have you heard of it? Lauren has heard of it.
Daniel:Yes. I have
Rob:Daniel has heard of it as well. So let me be specific about things that we're looking at when we talk about active learning, and then we wanna get your response. So discussions, group projects. Okay? Problem solving, real world problem solving opportunities, either by yourselves or in groups.
Rob:And, yeah, let's just start with those three. So of those, which ones do you use or have you used? And then what is your what's your feeling towards them? What do you think about them? Start with discussion groups.
Lauren:I personally love discussion based because I am an out loud processor, so sometimes I can't learn things unless I talk about it. But I know a lot of people who hate discussion based learning. So I think it just depends on how you learn and yeah.
Daniel:K. So I think there are, like, some classes that I've been in where discussion based has been helpful, where, like, teachers or professors have allowed, like, students to talk over a specific question for a couple minutes. And then there are are some classes where I don't think it's helpful with, like, online discussion boards. I don't find those helpful in any sense because I just try to put words out and are required to, like, answer other people, and I'm just trying to say, oh, this was good, and this was exactly what I said too. And so Yeah.
Daniel:I don't know.
Lauren:Great answer, Daniel. Yes. Great job.
Daniel:Or hello, Lauren. Hi, Daniel. My name is Daniel. This was a very helpful discussion. Thank you, though.
Daniel:I'm not actually learning anything from it. I write a couple sentences of the the couple paragraphs I put, but
Jared:So in in class, you think it's profitable?
Daniel:Yes.
Jared:Are you both students that are willing to engage in in class discussions? I feel like just from our initial conversations that you're both extroverted. I know Daniel pretty well. Lauren, I know your brother and he's not usually that extroverted, but I feel like you're the extrovert version.
Lauren:That is correct.
Jared:So are you guys more inclined to engage in discussion in class? Like what is the prompting for you to say, okay, I'm going to take a step here, raise my hand and say, yeah, I'm going to engage in this.
Daniel:Well, think it depends on the type of discussion. Like, the professor actually gives us some time to just talk with the students that I'm sitting next to. I'm a lot more likely to engage in discussion with one or two people. Yeah. And then for the, like, the whole class discussion, I tend to be more quiet.
Daniel:And so I'm content listening to what other people have to say. And sometimes I'll put a comment in as well.
Jared:So there's actually research something called a think pair share, which is where you're given time in class to engage with the question, then you are paired up or in small groups. And then from there is where you then engage in the entire class discussion. Mhmm. Have you been in a classroom where that's happened? Lauren, have you been in classroom?
Jared:Is is that helpful to you? Maybe you think it's
Rob:you think
Daniel:it's helpful?
Lauren:I do think it's helpful. Again, I in order for me to effectively learn, I need to be able to talk about it at some point. That's pretty much true of any subject. But I will say I'm going to be more inclined to talk in class if it's something that I'm interested in. So I do have a class that uses that he uses that method pretty much exclusively every day.
Lauren:He, like, gives the topic and then we talk in pairs and then he asks us to share what we learned in pairs. I almost never share what we learned in pairs because I'm not interested in what we're talking about at all whatsoever. Mhmm. So I do find that the discussion isn't as helpful because I'm not motivated to share, but that's not his fault.
Jared:Yeah. But the the research would say that a think pair share prepares you for be able to discuss the content and be more familiar with it. Not necessarily it doesn't take interest into like, if you were if you were called on in that share environment in that class, even though you didn't care about the content, do you think that the think pair share activity would have prepared you for it? Okay.
Lauren:That's what he does actually. He goes through the, the roster and just calls random names.
Jared:Gotcha. Okay.
Daniel:Well, that's good. That's
Lauren:mean, every day.
Rob:That's good.
Jared:Interesting. Have you have you done think pair share in your class in your classes?
Daniel:What is think pair share again? Like, can you walk me through that? I've never heard the terminology before.
Jared:Oh, that's why I'm here. I'm here for you, my friend. So think pair share, instructor throws a question up on the board, gives you a chance individually to think about it. You can jot stuff down, you can, type something up or you can think internally. Then the next part is pair where you are in someone else or in a small group discussing in a closed environment.
Jared:A couple minutes go by and the instructor says, okay, share what you guys talked about in your groups. And then it becomes a class wide discussion. That's a think pair share.
Daniel:I mean, I've had the pair share, but I I don't think they have given us time to think about those questions before.
Jared:Interesting. Okay.
Rob:So they're probably doing the thinking in the midst of the discussion. Mhmm. Is that fair?
Daniel:I would say so.
Jared:Okay. Alright. Alright. Well, that works for me.
Rob:So let's discuss group work. Collaborative learning, if you will.
Jared:Mhmm.
Rob:What do you think about it?
Jared:Well, let me say this.
Rob:Oh, boy.
Jared:Literature the literature that says that collaborative learning can help build interpersonal skills and deepen understanding. Go.
Lauren:There's never a time in my Cedarville experience where I haven't been working on a group project to an extent.
Jared:Wow.
Rob:So I
Lauren:have a lot of experience in this. Do I like them? Not exactly. Do I think they're helpful? Yes.
Lauren:So I do think it teaches us how to work with different people and work with different people's strengths. And I think I do learn well when I'm able to bounce ideas off of other people.
Jared:Okay.
Lauren:So I think that is helpful. So I think from a learning standpoint, they're typically helpful.
Rob:But you don't like it?
Lauren:I don't always hate I don't always hate them. It depend I mean, it it depends on your group. It depends on what you're doing. It depends on a lot of things.
Rob:When when we broached the subject, you had a visceral reaction.
Jared:Yeah. I mean It was very obvious.
Rob:People can't see it, but she's, going off to the side. I thought she was gonna fall out of her chair there for a moment. Yeah.
Lauren:They're very frustrating.
Jared:Uh-huh. Why?
Lauren:Because everyone is on a different mindset about how the project should look and everyone communicates in a different way. And sometimes that creates a lot of that creates issues when you're trying to work together and work towards a common goal, but everyone has a different idea of how the end common goal should look. And I'll give an example. I've worked in projects with people who are completely last minute procrastinators type of people, and then I've also worked in the same project with another person who likes to do everything three weeks in advance. So then that creates a lot of stress because everyone just has a different idea of what it should look like and no one and so it's hard to come to a conclusion.
Rob:Sounds like there's friction. Relational as well as project friction.
Lauren:That was deep. Mhmm.
Jared:What about you, Daniel? Daniel.
Daniel:I personally don't have as much experience with group projects.
Jared:Is that because you're not picked to be in a group? Is it like, you know, just let him
Daniel:do it by himself? Well, I just don't think my classes are really built around, like, group work.
Jared:Okay.
Daniel:Because most of my homework is just reading and writing. Yeah. So I don't really have a ton of experience with, like, required group work, but it has been nice to be able to work with some of my friends in the classes on a particular assignment and getting ideas on how they've done their work.
Jared:So So informal. Informal group work. Versus
Lauren:That is very different.
Jared:So you would say informal as well. You would agree with Daniel that informal is worthwhile.
Lauren:Yes. Why? Because I I feel like informal group work is taking all of the benefits of formal group work without the frustrating aspects of it.
Jared:Like what benefits?
Lauren:So I can work with someone that I know I'm gonna work well with. Like, I know that ahead of time and I can work with them because of that. Okay. Also, a lot of times with informal, you're still doing your own aspect of it. You're not like their their part is not necessarily determined on your grade.
Lauren:Whereas a lot of formal group work, at least in my experience, is Yeah. Which adds to stress.
Rob:So your grade's not dependent on someone else?
Jared:Yes. Yeah.
Rob:And you feel like it seems like you feel like you have more control
Lauren:Mhmm.
Rob:In the situation, but you also get to take the benefits of
Daniel:Like, I'm able to balance ideas off them. Mhmm.
Jared:Like Mhmm.
Daniel:I'm able to see how they went about doing the assignment and the parts that I'm not as sure of. I'm able to ask them particular questions and how they went about doing the assignment and, like, asking for their thoughts.
Rob:So
Daniel:I think that's beneficial in getting help, but not, I think, not working on the same assignment, getting the same result. You're able to do your own work
Lauren:Mhmm.
Daniel:While also being able to do the whole project. Whereas I think for some group projects, you, like, assign different portions of the assignments. So really, you're not even
Rob:doing the
Daniel:whole assignment anyways. You're just doing your own portion. Right. So that may be also another benefit of informal.
Jared:That's interesting. Again, research would say group work is important because you work in community and what we've the literature is talking about formal group work, but that seems to be kind of a because it is it okay to say that it feels forced
Lauren:Yes.
Jared:Group work? Even if you have the choice of groups. Yes. It still feels forced. Because somebody's telling you to do it.
Lauren:Most of my group projects are also like, they pick our groups, but they're they're intentionally making it forced. Like, they would be upfront about that. No. We are forcing you to work with different people so you learn how to work with different people. And I do think that's effective in a way.
Rob:I think it's effective if that's the
Lauren:If that's your goal.
Rob:Yeah. Right? Yeah. If that's your educational goal. But unfortunately, I think in a lot of situations, the content I mean, if it's a communication course of some sort, like professional communication, especially in teams, say, like, team communication, I could see why you would do something like That makes total sense because, hopefully, you're also learning strategies.
Rob:Most of the time, people are put in forced group work. They're not given actual strategies to how to explore the gaps between expectations and performance.
Jared:Mhmm.
Rob:Right? So if you have someone who is used to working three weeks ahead, like Lauren said, and then you have someone who really operates well the night before, like everything comes together in their head, and they're able to just go, you know, put it on paper and still get a good grade. That's just how they operate. But the expectations from the person who is three weeks ahead expects everybody to operate like themselves. And so therefore, there's a gap.
Rob:Right? There's a gap in expectations to what's actually being done, and they have no tools with which to communicate with one another and explore that gap and figure out a way to to come to some sort of an agreement of how they were going to operate. To me, if you haven't given people the tools, it's kind of it's hijacking your objectives for the course, especially if they don't have anything to do with with the material at hand.
Jared:I'm assuming the same is true with how many online courses have you guys taken? You've you've taken a lot. What about you, Daniel? In high school. In high school?
Daniel:I've taken, like, multiple, but not a ton.
Jared:I assume that group work in an online course is about the same for you guys. Do you have experience with that or
Lauren:have you done A little.
Jared:Yeah.
Lauren:I would say that group work in an online course is completely useless.
Jared:Honesty. Love
Lauren:it. Because you're not working as a group. You're just usually, how that goes is it'll be an email, and it's like, oh, so and so has this part. So and so has this part. So and so has this part.
Lauren:So what's the point of working in a group? There is none.
Rob:Well, you have to communicate at some point.
Jared:You do have to talk at some point.
Rob:Again Daniel, I don't think Daniel
Jared:What do you think?
Rob:Had any online group.
Daniel:I don't I haven't had any online group projects. All we've all I've had is like the online discussion posts.
Rob:And he loves those.
Jared:Yeah. It's it's it's just so difficult because, again, I'm going back to research. One of the focuses I did in my doctoral education is online learning and online teaching. And one of the big factors they kept pushing was like in order for a student to feel connected in a course, and I've talked about this on the podcast, the community of inquiry, Student to content interaction, student to teacher, and then student to student. In other words, they have to have some sort of content or communication between students, and that can be in a discussion, which you both have said in an online environment is useless.
Jared:And the other one is collaboration or group work, which Lauren, you've said is useless. So I'm sitting here going, well, what do we do to help students connect? Because that's a way of feeling connected in an online course so you don't feel like you're out on your own island by yourself taking an online course.
Rob:I think that's where those back channels come in. Remember? Remember your back channel?
Jared:I do, but that's organic. It's not something that you as an instructor say, do a back channel.
Rob:Well, I think you can make it a possibility. You can put it out there. And you might be able to get that way if you do something like icebreaker or something where they they actually talk to each other about things that they like and draw connections that way outside of the content itself and try to find people that they might actually talk to.
Jared:Yeah. To inform you guys, back channel communication is any kind of like Discord. Like, we have Discord open right now for our podcast backchannel. It's an informal communication that happens concurrently with something formal going on. So we did an episode on backchannel communication throughout my doctorate program.
Jared:And we talked about how we felt a sense of connectedness with each other because we were having this communication that was outside of class in an online environment. Like the my degree was totally online and I felt more connected with my classmates, my peers, because of the back channel communication through Discord and not because of any kind of discussion that happens inside of class. So that's what back channel is. And that what Rob is saying is he feels like that's where maybe that's where the connectedness comes from.
Rob:Yeah. There's gotta be some sort of organic. Did did either of you have in your online courses, did you have any folks that you connected with outside the course?
Jared:Of the course.
Daniel:Oh, outside of the course?
Rob:Yeah. Yeah. That were in the course, but you talked more outside the course. In other words, you weren't necessarily talking about things in the course or, I mean, you weren't working like on discussions or discussion boards with them. You were maybe you were talking about something that, you know, you like to do.
Jared:Or you were talking about the course, but it wasn't necessarily about the content, was more about, like we would talk about, what one of our instructors wore to the Zoom meetings that we had. That kind of stuff.
Daniel:I mean, like the only online courses I've taken are when I was in high school taking classes at Cedarville. And so I didn't interact with any of the students. I didn't actually know any of those students.
Rob:Okay.
Daniel:Actually, I guess so there was for summer scholars the year of 2020, I took Bible and the Gospel. And so all of our courses were Zoom meetings. Okay. And so I did at least I was able to interact with some of those students because there's more of talking Mhmm. Not face to face, but it was at least seeing their face.
Daniel:So that's a little bit different. Like, I wouldn't choose to interact with, like, over text. Like, I'm not huge at, like, texting or communicating through text and or email.
Rob:Okay.
Daniel:I prefer to, like, talk to people, and so I don't really feel connected as much in those forms of communication. So, like, in my classes here, like, I'll talk with students outside of class about the classes when I'm seeing them. Mhmm. So I think it's a little bit different. But for online courses, I did find that.
Jared:That's still back channel communication.
Rob:Yeah. It's not a form
Daniel:But, like, for online classes, I didn't really find that.
Jared:Sure. Sure. Alright. Your thoughts?
Lauren:Honestly, I think I didn't feel the need to talk to people through online classes outside of anything. I think I view online classes differently than in person classes. If I'm taking an online class, I view that class as, okay, here's a checklist. I'm gonna get that done as soon as possible. I don't view it as like, I'm here to learn.
Lauren:I'm here to get to know people. No. I get my checklist done and I'm done for the week. So I don't feel the need to, like, try to oh, like, does that make sense?
Jared:Yeah. Does that does that come back to interest again?
Lauren:A little bit, but I've also taken online classes that are more interesting, and I think the social aspect of it just isn't relevant for me because it's online. So I have taken online classes that I've liked more, but I just didn't see that as something I would care to
Jared:do. Okay.
Lauren:That makes sense.
Jared:Interesting.
Lauren:That could be a personal thing, though.
Jared:Yeah. But also, I think one of the things that was so effective for me is because we came in as a cohort as a group.
Lauren:Yes.
Jared:And going through four or five years together will create some of a commonality bond.
Rob:Especially if you face challenges together. Yeah. I think that's one of the things too is there's no probably opportunity for some of those hard things unless something like COVID happens. And then all of a sudden you're having conversations with somebody through Zoom and you're seeing them and you're talking with them. I would say there's probably some connection because you can think back to that time.
Rob:Right? And you you remember those people. Mhmm. So I think there's opportunity for it, but it's just there's still a lot of work to be done in this area, especially in the online side to to create community and to reframe exactly what most kids are doing in the social networks.
Jared:So synthesizing best practices overall seem to align, but except for the areas of group work and, like, interaction with with each with
Ryan:student, like student student interaction. Thanks for listening to this episode of Transform Your Teaching. Remember to like and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform. You can also connect with us on LinkedIn. Feel free to shoot us a question or a comment.
Ryan:We would greatly appreciate it. Also, don't forget to check out our blog at cedarville.edu/focusblog.