Hello again 👋 –

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It’s time for the sixth concept in the series Pillars of Active Learning. If you missed the previous weeks, you can catch up here:

1. ​Re-imagining the lecture as the final frontier​
2. ​Challenges of active learning​
3. ​Use story​
4. ​Incorporate physical objects​
5. ​Using micro-lessons​
6. ​Entice curiosity​
7. ​Incorporate movement​
8. ​Build Community​

This week, the content is around Establishing Best Practices for Group Work. Students working together in groups is a foundational active learning tool. As the educator, you are responsible for ensuring that the groups function as intended and that the group activity creates a meaningful learning experience.

Establishing group work guidelines early and often gives you the confidence that students are participating and interacting in a way that meets the learning outcomes.

🎯 Getting started

Here are a few tips for getting started:

• 📝 Give the group a specific, structured task. Asking students to create a written or visual product is an excellent way to demonstrate learning. Keep work from previous student groups to use as examples.
• ⏱️Enforce time limits. Even for short tasks, set a timer that is displayed for the class to see. For more prolonged activities, give incremental warnings for extended activities at 15, 10, and 5 minutes remaining. Time limits help keep teams on task.
• 🙋 Set some basic etiquette rules. Only one student is talking at a time. Bring the classroom to silence by raising a hand and asking them to stop talking and raise their hand when they see you do this.
• 🧙 Assign individual roles. Other roles could include note-taker, timekeeper, math whiz, or researcher. At a minimum, assign one student as the leader. This person will speak for the group and share the group’s product or answer to the question.

Alright, we’ve got the basics covered. Now, let’s move on to more advanced topics.

🚶🏾‍♀️Get involved

In an active learning classroom, there is no sitting at the front podium sorting through email. Be available for questions, and get in the trenches. Walk around to each group and ask them to explain their thinking. Have the group leader practice what they will share with the larger group.

This is essential in creating a connection with your students and shows that you are invested in the learning process with them. It moves the educator from an unapproachable podium speaker to a relatable human, there to help them learn and develop. It creates an environment where students are open with their questions and feel safe sharing their ideas.

♾️ Develop a routine

Routine is not boring! Routine lets our minds and bodies know what to expect. Routine can actually improve students’ bandwidth for learning new information and creative thinking because students understand the well-worn cadence of the classroom.

📌 Here is a simple plan for a routine: Start class with an informal activity. Do short micro-lessons (10-15 minutes) followed by an activity. Each activity has a brief, large group discussion where students share progress reports or their final product. Finally, have students complete a group exit ticket or a short quiz with alternative format question practice. Give students a break every hour. Establishing a simple routine that you follow each class period will help students know what to expect, giving them extra bandwidth and allowing you to experiment with various active learning tools.

🧭 Explore different types of group work

Research supports that structured courses with collaborative learning (i.e., group work) have improved retention and persistence rates. There is a wide variety of ways that students can work in groups. It does not always have to be a “share with your neighbor” scenario. Here are a few examples:

Cooperative Learning

Cooperative learning is what you typically think of regarding group work: everyone on the team working on the same problem, completing the task together. This is a classic teamwork scenario where students must communicate effectively and use their “soft skills” to succeed.

Collaborative Learning

This one takes the highest spot in Bloom’s taxonomy—create! Students create an actual product. It could be a patient teaching handout, a care plan poster, or a crowd-sourced study guide. The idea is to move control of the activity from the instructor to the student groups.

Peer Teaching

In this type of group work, students become the teachers. I love using this type of activity as it requires students to take ownership of their learning. For example, when I teach arterial blood gas interpretation, I assign student groups to learn different techniques through recorded lectures and online research. Then, in class, each group teaches the other groups the process they have mastered. By teaching others, students can demonstrate that they understand the content.

😰 Drawbacks of group work

As with any teaching technique, group work has disadvantages. By being aware of the potential downfalls, you can be proactive in giving students the best group experience possible.

• 🥱 Inactivity by some members - there is a term for this: social loafing. It is the tendency for a student to exert less effort on a project when working with a group than if they worked independently. Some students will inevitably coast and allow others to carry the bulk of the group’s assigned task in a larger group. To combat social loafing, use smaller group sizes and peer evaluations.
• 🚧 Even if everyone participates, there will inevitably be an uneven distribution of the work.
• 🤳🏽 Students can easily be distracted by social conversation. Use a timer to keep everyone on track.
• 📑 Grading groups can lead to unfair assessment. Look for alternative format assessments. Check out the newsletters "Grading for Growth" or "Unmaking the Grade" for ideas.
• ⌛Group work has an opportunity cost due to lost time to direct instruction or other teaching methods.
• 😖 Throughout the problem-solving process, disagreements may occur. If the majority overrules, the whole group could go in the wrong direction.
• 🧮 Instructors should monitor peer teaching closely. You would not want one student teaching another student incorrect information or an incorrect process.

💡Final Thoughts

Utilizing effective group management techniques in a nursing flipped classroom can be a game-changer for educators. With proper preparation, strategic organization, and a basic framework, educators can foster an environment where learners are not passive but instead active participants. It is also a great way to access the power of community that we discussed last week.

Be flexible, leverage various forms of group work to infuse excitement, and adapt tasks to suit different learning objectives. You got this!

Next week is already the final week of this series! We will review using debriefing as an active learning tool.
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​ 🫂 Connect in the Facebook community ​Say hi →​ ✨ Active Learning Products ​Check out the decks →​ 💡 Practical Teaching Ideas ​Read the articles →​

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