The Watering Hole

Student To Student

The watering hole is an informal space where peer to peer information and discoveries are shared and encouraged. This shared space can serve as an incubator for ideas and can promote a sense of shared culture while welcoming difference. Truth of the matter is we always want people to work together but we really don't have very many models or ideas for how people can work together effectively somehow think it's enough to put people in a group and say go and go and work. Therefore creating a healthy watering hole promotes highly interactive, participatory structure for organizing group/collaborative work. The goal is to build, share, and express knowledge through a process of open dialogue and deep reflection around issues or problems with a focus on a shared outcome.

Learning Circle Model: Collaborative Knowledge Building

Online Learning Circles are teams of distance learners who use technology to acquire a deeper understanding of areas of shared interest. The structure balances individual ownership with collective responsibility to provide a setting that helps everyone achieve their learning objectives.

The circle is managed by distributed leadership and suggests that each participant be engaged in leading one of the group projects. They can be used in a wide range of formal and informal contexts. We provide many examples of global learning circles used to connect learners in different locations at all levels of school, from primary to graduate-level work. Other examples include the use of learning professional development, in evaluation, and action research.

The Learning Circle is a structure for collaborative work that shares features with other community-based learning groups, but also differs in specific ways. Most importantly, it is a task-based learning community in contrast to a practice-based or knowledge-based learning community (Riel and Polin, 2004). Instead of one shared group task, learning circles focus on a set of smaller intersecting group tasks, each lead by one of the circle participants. Effective learning circle work involves building a level of trust and developing shared norms of trust, openness and reciprocity.

To learn and explore the application of the Learning Circle, visit Online Learning Circles: Building Knowledge Through Collaborative Projects

Creating Connection from Learning Dimensions to Planning Cooperative Learning

Inspiration from Culturally Responsive Teaching: Theory Research and Practice. 3rd edition by Geneva Gay

Learning Dimensions

Understanding learning dimensions may help design culturally compatible instruction for ethnically diverse students. The interactive composite of these dimensions should be considered for designing culturally responsive instructional practices and spaces. Geneva Gay (2010) describes a range of opportunities for each learning style dimension.

Procedural: Preferred ways of approaching and working through learning tasks. This includes preferences in pacing, predictability, structure, active learning, task- direction, sociality, direct teaching and inquiry.
Communicative: The organization and sequence of thoughts conveyed in spoken and written forms and characterized by discourse techniques such as topic-associative and storytelling versus passive-receptive and reporting.
Substantive: Preferred content, depth of knowledge, topics and subjects, and range of cognitive processing such as memorizing, applying, comparing and creating.
Environmental: Preferred physical, social and interpersonal settings for learning.
Organizational: The structural arrangements for work and study space both physically (reﬂected in the environment) and procedural (evidenced by work ﬂow and tools for cognitive recall).
Perceptual: Multiple sensory modalities for receiving, processing, and transmitting information.
Relational: Interpersonal and social interaction in learning including formality, competition, cooperation, independence and locus of control.
Motivational: Preferred incentives to energize learning including individual accomplishment, competition, cooperation, harmony, image, integrity and rewards (pp.179-180).

Geneva Gay (2010) explains that students of color that are more traditional in culture demonstrate a high value of human connectedness and collaborative problem-solving (p.208-209). Sometimes this is a value to the collective voice of the group, tendency for performance-style of communication or to establish harmony. Although cooperative learning is conducive to the learning and communication styles of many students of color, instructors should not assume that students (or themselves) automatically know how to do cooperative learning.

How to Cultivating a Cooperative Learning Environment

Create a classroom climate that values cooperation and community at all times
Phase cooperative learning into instruction gradually on the levels of both frequency and magnitude.
Allow time and provide opportunities for students and the instructor to become comfortable and skilled with cooperative learning.
Use a combination of individual, small-group and whole-class learning activities.
Use multidimensional tasks and be very clear in explaining these to students.

More resources on fostering student to student interaction

A nice series from Carnegie Mellon University

Other helpful ideas and guidelines

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