A global classroom collaboration

Over the last month or so my students have been participating in a global classroom collaboration. This has been an exciting foray into my first proper collaboration of this sort, and was initiated via a Twitter conversation with a colleague, Jodie, in the USA. 

A screenshot from the Flipgrid web app.

The plan for the initial lesson can be found here. Briefly, we each had our classes do research about our respective local biomes, surroundings, and cultures. The students then developed clues relating to their research. I had my students write the clues out as scripts which would form the basis of video messages they recorded using the Flipgrid app. The students in my colleague's class then viewed the videos, and my students viewed theirs. The students then submitted written questions to each other using Padlet, with which to try & glean more information in order to guess the location of each other's school. The great thing about this approach is that it can be done asynchronously, avoiding any difficulties arising from being in very different time zones. 

I was very impressed with the level of engagement my students showed during the development of their clues, and they put a lot of thought into them. Since they are English language learners I assisted them with the development of their scripts, mainly just to remove words or phrases that would give away our location too easily.

The next lesson I had students download the free Flipgrid app onto their smartphones and enter the hashtag for our collaborative grid. This had been set up previously by Jodie, using her paid Flipgrid account. Once the grid has been set up, anyone can be invited to upload short video recordings to it via the app. These subsequent users do not pay any additional sign up fees. We experienced no problems downloading the app or accessing the class grid. 

I let my students find somewhere quiet to record their videos, and made sure they used areas where there were no distinguishing features that would have given their location away. They rehearsed their scripts briefly, then recorded and uploaded their video messages to Flipgrid. This was a very straightforward process, with no technical difficulties presented by using the app to record the videos. 

My students spent a number of periods working on this project, and were very engaged and actively participating throughout. Overall, their feedback from an evaluation questionnaire they completed following the project was extremely positive, as exemplified by the following comments (verbatim):

• I learned a lot from the Flipgrid project, one of them being to not use the country or places you live as a barrier for your learning
• I learned about biology in other country, such as climate and biomes. I also got to know their culture and lifestyle which is very interesting. 
• I learned both of biodiversity in Thailand and Texas that I've never known before.
• This project should continue. I really enjoyed it and I'm sure other students will enjoy it too.

The one drawback to this project was its timing, in that we began just before the Christmas/New Year break, and one of my students noted in their evaluation feedback following the project that this had had a dampening effect: 'May be not to use during the holidays? It was so exciting at first but then they had their holidays followed by our breaks so we kinda forgot about it'. This was a fair point, but as we all know the reality of school schedules means that we can't always fit things in where we would like. In the future, though, I would try to avoid spreading an activity such as this over an extended break. 

I have seen some educators criticise global classroom collaborations as being undertaken simply because technology now allows this. However, based on my students' own comments, together with my observations, this approach does seem to have positive learning outcomes. I feel that the main content-driven learning occurred during the initial lesson, when students were developing their clues relating to their local environment, such as which biome they are located in. The learning which took place in subsequent lessons related more to language skills, for example my ELLs trying to understand native English speakers talking at normal speed. It also offered students in their different countries cultural insights to see what their differences were and also their similarities - would the US teenagers have guessed that Thai teenagers' favourite foods were pizza and pasta for instance!

Overall, I feel that this was a successful activity, both in terms of the content learned and the level of student engagement. I would be happy to hear others' views on this, or similar undertakings that they have done. 

When is student collaboration simply a division of labour - and how can we avoid this?

As educators we are often told that collaboration is one of the key skills we need to instil in our learners. Collaboration is frequently referred to as a 21st century skill, although many educators might (rightly) argue that it is a skill that has been taught for many decades. I think one of the reasons that collaboration has come to be seen as a 21st century skill is partly because there are now so many tools available to foster collaboration among learners, both inside and outside of the classroom. However, what does collaboration in education really mean? I have tried a number of ways to encourage and foster collaboration in my classes, and I have seen both 'good' examples of collaboration and 'bad' ones. I will describe the latter first, before going on to describe good examples of collaboration. 

Image designed by Gavin Keech via Venessa Miemis http://gg.gg/Flickr-com

'Bad' collaboration

When I refer to 'bad' collaboration I mean it in the sense that there is no shared learning experience taking place. In this case, collaboration often simply becomes a division of labour. Students work in groups, and instead of working together to solve problems or answer questions, they divide up the work between group members. Each student then works individually on their set of problems, and as a group, the complete set of problems gets solved. I have even seen a whole class create a Google Doc to work on a set of problems together! 

Even from a content or knowledge acquisition point of view, this approach tends to suggest a poor outcome for students, besides any questions around their learning. If they have only answered a subset of the problems, what happens when it comes to exam time? 

Obviously what I have outlined here are extreme examples, and often students will be discussing all of the questions or problems within their groups as they do their work. But I think that this is a valid problem, and one that I am still thinking of ways to avoid. 

'Good' collaboration

One of the better examples of 'good' collaboration I have seen was when I had students work in groups to create webpages. Some group members acted as researchers, finding relevant information online. Others acted as writers, putting the content into context and summarising the research. Students who were less interested in the topic itself, but who were interested in web design, took care of the web page design side of things. They even created an FAQs page to guide other groups in how to embed videos, change formatting etc. 

While this approach was successful from a project point of view, and afforded great student voice and choice, there is an obvious drawback. What happens to those students who were working on web design when they come to sit their biology exam? The exam is necessarily based more around biology content, and certainly not around web design. What I am essentially making the case for here is less summative exams and more competencies and skills-based assessment. In this way 'good' collaboration can be encouraged and developed.

Generally speaking, project based learning (PBL) can also be useful for promoting good collaborative work, and I have blogged previously about how I have attempted to incorporate elements of PBL into science projects that I am responsible for coordinating. Long-term, open-ended, group projects offer plenty of scope for learners to find their niche within the group, and to pursue their own particular interests within the context of their overall project goals. 

Summary

From a learners' point of view dividing up the labour may be good in the short-term, however, in the long-term this is not going to lead to a deeper learning experience, or necessarily be an enjoyable or memorable one. An engaging and effective activity that fosters genuine collaboration, on the other hand, could potentially lead to a deeper, richer understanding for all involved. 

I am still trying to figure out the best ways to incorporate and foster collaboration in my classes. As ever, any comments or suggestions are welcome.