Best Practices: Encourage Student-Student Interaction

Encouraging this is your classes is is one of Chickering & Gamson's "Seven Principles of Good Practice in Undergraduate Education" 

What is It?

Structured and regular opportunities for dialog between your students about the course material can help with student motivation and retention. As Chickering & Gamson originally stated:

"Good learning, like good work, is collaborative and social, not competitive and isolated. Working with others often increases involvement in learning. Sharing one's own ideas and responding to others' reactions sharpens thinking and deepens understanding."

 - Chickering & Gamson's "Seven Principles of Good Practice in Undergraduate Education" 

Students in about any career field will find themselves needing to work closely and collaborate with their peers. Encouraging students to interact with their classmates by conscious design will help students develop those skills, but also to reap many educational benefits. As Palloff & Pratt put it:

"By learning together in a learning community, students have the opportunity to extend and deepen their learning experience, test out new ideas by sharing them with a supportive group, and receive critical and constructive feedback. The likelihood of successful achievement in learning objectives and achieving course competencies increases through collaborative engagement."

(Palloff & Pratt. Collaborating Online: Learning Together in Community, Jossey-Bass, 2005, pg 8)

Likewise, as research and best practices has shown time and again, learning should not be a soliloquy of only the teacher's voice. Students of all skill levels need to talk about the material they are being exposed to. As Fink (2003) put it:

"...When we engage with dialog with others, the possibility of finding new and richer meanings increases dramatically. In addition, when people collaboratively search for the meaning of experiences, information and ideas, they also create the foundation for community. Creating a sense of community is a concept that can greatly enhance the quality of a learning experience at the level of an individual course and at the level of the whole college experience."

(Fink, Creating Significant Learning Experiences: An Integrated Approach to Desigining College Courses, Jossey-Bass, 2003, pg 106)

How Do you Address This/Use It?

Structured and regular opportunities for dialog between students can take several forms:

• Facilitate Class Discussions

  • After students are exposed to new material, find a key focused discussion prompt and facilitate a class discussion on this. Some specific ideas:

  • - How does this new material relate to what we have already studied?

  • - Why is this theory/idea/technique important?

  • - What is the most important idea here?

  • - What are some current examples of this material playing out in the world today?

• Small Group Work

  • Incorporate through discussions or class time for small group activities, such as a case study illustrating new material where each group must come up with a solution or analysis or recommendation for the given situation and or defend their answers to the other groups.

• Peer Review/Critique

  • For selected assessments or deliverables, have an opportunity where individual students or small groups share or present a draft deliverable or perform a demonstration of a technique or skill. The other students then need to offer constructive and substantiative feedback on the deliverable or skill. Note: Offering guidelines and especially rubrics to students can help keep the dialog focused and on the material rather than individuals.

  • Team-Based Learning   

For more specific ideas, see OLN's collection of links.

Discussion as a Way of Teaching: Tools and Techniques for a Democratic Classroomby Stephen Brookfield & Stephen Preskill. Jossey-Bass 1999

• Ohio Learning Network's Collection of Resources on Encouraging Student-Student Interaction

What are Potential Issues/Downsides to Be Prepared For?

• "Lone Ranger" Students - 

  • Some students may state that they learn best on their own and such "touchy feely" activities may be seen as an impediment to them getting "just the facts" from you alone. Research has shown that 2-4% of the student population can be consistently successful in this paradigm. Even that elite segment often still benefits from explaining/dialogging with their peers.

• Assertive Monopolizing Students -

  • For opportunities for student dialog and interaction, some students may be more assertive and or tend to dominate discussions or interactions.  This can be addressed by offering safeguards and techniques to try and prevent this. One specific permissibility includes for group/class discussions giving each student a red, yellow and green sheets of paper, and each time they want to be called on to hold up the green sheet the first time, yellow for the second time they want to be called on and red for a third. You can then visually see who has yet to contribute as well as limit the amount any one student can control the dialog. 

• Time -

  • Class student to student interactions and dialog processes takes class time. If you  find yourself in a race to "cover" all the content for a quarter via lectures, you may be reluctant to let go of class time to do this. Yet carefully structured student activities can cover several pieces of material, as well as show what students are and are not getting to allow you to be more efficient with your lecture time. Likewise, you could use Elluminate or Gabcast or other such tools to "can" lecture material so that students can go through your lecture BEFORE class and then use student interactions to drill down and highlight which topics/material you need to offer further explanation on. Another tack is to utilize Blackboard to facilitate or conduct student interactions outside of the classroom (Note; if doing this, make sure there is a clear and articulated linkage between Blackboard and classroom discussions!!).      

Examples How This Might Be Implemented in a Distance - Online/Hybrid/Video Conferencing Course?

• • Class Discussion Board postings

  • Small group/team work case studies, leading a week of discussions  or creating deliverables

  • Live online or face to face study groups

Collaborating Online: Learning Together in Community by Rena Palloff & Keith Pratt. Jossey-Bass, 2005.