Читать книгу Student Learning Communities - Нэнси Фрей - Страница 22

Collaborative experiences and tasks should ensure that students are contributing to the success of the group. Of course, individuals have different skill sets, but the point of a student learning community is to share skills with others and learn from one another in the process. Ivan Dale Steiner (1972) developed a taxonomy of group tasks that provides guidance for teachers as they decide which tasks to use. This model has three categories: component (or divisibility), focus (quantity or quality), and interdependence (combinational strategies).

The component category directs teachers to consider whether or not the task has subcomponents that can be identified and then individually assigned. Divisible tasks are those that can be parceled out and given to individuals. Unitary tasks cannot be further separated and require either the group to work together or one person to complete the task while others watch (or disengage).

The focus category asks teachers to consider whether the task's priority is quantity or quality. Is your concern how much the group will produce or how well they will produce it? Maximizing tasks focus on greater quantity, whereas optimizing tasks focus on greater quality. Imagine a group test. If the stated goal were to get as many questions right within a set amount of time as possible, and partial credit could be earned for partial answers, the group would focus on maximizing the number of responses and getting as much done as possible. However, if points were deducted for incorrect answers, the group would likely focus on optimizing their responses: answering only those questions they were confident in their ability to answer correctly. Of course, there are many group tasks that are not tests, but you get the point.

The final category in the group task taxonomy is interdependence—the various ways in which individual contributions to a group might be combined. As we will see later in this chapter, interdependence is a hallmark of group learning. Steiner's model lays out five task types that support interdependence:

 Additive tasks: Each member contributes individually, and the individual parts are combined for the group task. An example would be a presentation created by a group with the clarification that each member is permitted to go off and create a slide or two independently; they do not need to work together to accomplish the task. The risk with additive tasks is that they often fail to foster the dialogue necessary for student learning communities to flourish. There is a temptation in distance learning to use additive tasks that students can complete on their own and then assemble as a final product. But without opportunities to dialogue, learning across members is limited. Consider adding periodic group check-ins so that students must interact intermittently. This might be accomplished through the chat function of the learning management system, by using a video discussion tool, or through a collaborative online document.

 Compensatory tasks: Group members average their individual recommendations and reach agreement about an overall recommendation or solution. An example would be students in an art class who are taught critique techniques, asked to develop scoring criteria, and then provided several pieces of art to evaluate independently. Each student scores the piece using the group's agreed-upon criteria, then the group reassembles, discusses members' individual scores and the rationales behind them, and eventually reaches consensus on a group or average score.

 Disjunctive tasks: The group selects one person's answer to represent the thinking of the group. An example would be a group having to come to agreement on the strongest "pro" and "con" statements to kick off a debate about lowering the voting age for national elections. Each member of the group supplies an idea, but only one is chosen for the first round of the debate.

 Conjunctive tasks: Group members all contribute to the final product, which sounds really good but can be problematic if the performance of the group is judged by the weakest contribution. Team sports are a familiar example of conjunctive tasks—and the inherent pros and cons. Either the team wins, or it does not. Everyone on the team either wins or loses. An academic example would be something like a competitive task at a Model UN event. Students in each group are incentivized to work hard to prepare their peers, knowing it's a win-or-lose situation.

 Discretionary tasks: Members of the group determine what each member's contribution will be and how to combine the individual contributions to produce the best group effort. An example would be a performance from a group of 4th graders that brings to life a section of the history text they are reading. They assign one another roles, but task execution requires them to practice the written script, refine their timing and presentation, and ultimately perform the skit.

Consider this exchange between three students in a face-to-face high school biology class as they attempt to understand the findings of a lab experiment, and how the individuals' contributions drive the task execution—and open it up to interesting new avenues of exploration. Three days earlier, the students had collected saliva samples from their mouths and cultured them in agar dishes. Other dishes contained samples swabbed from other surfaces in the classroom (lab tabletops, the door handle, etc.). The task was conjunctive, as the students had to contribute to the discussion and reach agreements about what to submit in their lab report.

Jake: Man, that's gross [pointing at dish]! Look at all this crud in my mouth!

Kelly: I've got the same thing. There's stuff all over it.

Jake: Bacteria.

Maria: Exactly. Look, you can trace the swab marks.

Kelly: But compare it to the room samples we collected. There's way less bacteria on the room sample collection plates.

Jake: So what does that say about the comparison?

Kelly: Well, our mouths are way more disgusting than our classroom.

Maria: Yeah, but is that really the conclusion? We have to write it up in the lab report.

Jake: OK, yeah, it's more than that. We can say that based on our samples, there was more bacteria present in human mouths than on classroom surfaces.

Kelly: But we can't comment on whether the bacteria from our mouths or the classroom are harmful.

Maria: Right! We don't know that yet.

Jake: Well, that's what I want to know. There might be less bacteria on the classroom surfaces, but what if it's more harmful? How could we find that out?

Kelly: You know what Mr. Walsh will want. We gotta write up a hypothesis.

Jake: Yeah, but it would be cool! Let's find out how we can test these samples for dangerous bacteria.