Active Learning (15 mins)
Student-to-Student Interaction
Interaction between students can include formal course-related collaboration and interaction as well as more informal social interaction, which can increase students' comfort with each other and with the online environment. Student-to-student interaction-based activities include but are not limited to:
- group projects
- group case studies
- peer instruction
- role playing
- synchronous or asynchronous discussions or debates
- collaborative brainstorming
- peer review of selected work
Any of these examples can be used on a large or a small scale ranging from semester-long project groups doing research and presenting results to an optional live meeting where those present discuss a short video case or a discussion forum where they brainstorm alternatives to a textbook problem.
Depending on the size of your class, you can encourage student-to-student interaction class-wide or in smaller groups or pairs. When working with smaller groups, it helps to emphasize individual accountability, positive interdependence, and positive interaction in grading the group's work (Kirschner, Strijbos, Kreijns, & Beers, 2004). This strategy leads to three grades on a group project emphasizing the three aspects of group work:
- individual contribution to the group project
- synthesis of the individual parts into a project that shows collaboration, consensus, and learning
- working together to encourage and facilitate each other's efforts to complete the project
It's helpful to think through the balance of interaction over the entire course. Particularly, providing activities that offer a range of student-to-student interaction (from substantial to moderate to light to none) allows students with different preferences for the amount of peer interaction to be comfortable at some points and challenged to expand their comfort zone at others.