5.   Develop lessons or projects with active/cooperative learning and teaming in mind.

 It helps to think about active/cooperative learning techniques when you are planning lessons or projects.  Make choices on the presentation of materials—topic, order and amount of information—keeping these techniques in mind.  Executing team activities and projects really does require a different mindset than a lecture, so thoughtful planning can make a world of difference between a successful and a non-successful activity.   

P.K. Imbrie

“Well, I'm an aerospace engineer, so I have them build a helicopter.  That's one of them.   They're given a piece of paper; the purpose of it is: what team can come up with this paper helicopter design that will take the longest to drop to the ground from a second-story building?  I've also used—although I can't do this one anymore—I used to have this whole pack of computer cards, punch cards, and I had them make a bridge that spanned between two coke cans, and it would support the weight of a coke can.  They were one-class period exercises that were simply aimed at "Can we work together as a team to come up with an idea?"                                                                                         

Russ Pimmel

“You have to learn how to create assignments that are appropriate for a team activity.  So those are the big things—an attitude change . . . how to teach teaming skills, and how to create assignments that fit into a cooperative learning activity.  Then you’ve got to be adaptable—pay attention to what you’re doing, what you see, what students say about it, and then figure out what’s wrong and how to fix it.  So you’ve got to be self-critical.”

 “….If I’m writing a regular course, digital systems or computer architecture, I just plan on building in [cooperative learning activities] periodically—two or three per lecture—and so when I get to the end of a topic, I’ll stick an exercise in there.  When I’m doing a transition, I’ll put something in there to get them involved. 

“….you’ve got to pick more carefully what you put into a course.  I think you’ve got to structure it a little bit in smaller bites.  You have to think a lot about what your real objective is.”

Ron Roedel

“Basically, the class preparation is involved.  It takes a little more time because I have to try to be a little more creative than I do with the lecture mode.  Having done it for some time now, it is becoming second nature to me, and, so, it is taking less time to prepare than the lecture process.”                                                                                           

Veronica Burrows

“There are planning items and execution items.  In planning, you start with the learning goals.   Once you have the learning goals and the level of learning that you want them to achieve, you design the activity to be suitable for that level of learning.  If I want them to achieve application level, then I have to force them to choose the appropriate approach, because that’s really what application level would mean.  If I want them to achieve comprehension level, I’ll instruct them to use this technique or that technique, because that would be at the comprehension level.   

“You need to put very tight time constraints on them.  Most cooperative learning exercises are successful, despite the fact that the students will almost never complete them—to the students’ satisfaction—in the time allotted.  Giving them a tight time schedule forces them to stay on topic; it forces someone to play the role—either that you designate them in the role or they choose that role—of timekeeper and resource manager.  When you don’t have that time pressure, they seem not to perform so well.   

“You have to build in a reporting-out feature.  If it’s a long exercise, there has to be reporting out at various points in the process.  Sometimes, if it’s a small enough room, and you’re going to have a chance to make personal contact with each team or each group of students, then you can do it informally by just walking, talking to find out where they’re at, what difficulties they are encountering.  If it’s a very large class, then it’s very important to have those intermediate reporting-out parts so that questions are shared among the class, so that general direction keeps everyone on track.  Reporting out is not just on product but reporting out on process.  There’s always process reporting included in all my exercises.” 

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