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3.1: Group Work Sessions

  • Page ID
    130203
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    About Group Work Sessions

    Throughout the week, you and your team will participate in groups of four during group work sessions. During those sessions, you will be moving at your pace through the stages described below.

    Goals

    The goal of the first session is to meet your group mates, pick the topics for your teachable tidbit, and begin to backward design your tidbit. Backward design will consist of writing learning goals and outcomes, identifying summative assessments that will provide data about student learning and finally developing the learning activities that will help students achieve the desired outcomes.

    Teachable tidbits

    During the institute, each group will develop teachable tidbits that address topics/concepts within the group’s topic area. Teachable tidbits are instructional materials designed to engage students in learning. Generally, they consist of a single activity that can be integrated into a larger context, such as a course or a lecture. You will work through the following stages in your group:

    1. Group Dynamics. Identify and discuss your own constructive and destructive group behaviors and the stages of group development.
    2. Identify a topic area for your teachable tidbit. You want this to be narrow enough to address within the timeframe allotted. For example, if your topic is evolution, will you focus on some aspect of the concept of natural selection, like the role of mutation in genetic variation, or another concept altogether?
    3. Identify learning goals and intended outcomes for the teachable tidbit. Start by stating broad learning goals such as “students will understand equilibrium” and then move on to more specific learning outcomes for each goal. If you stopped at this point, you might leave students wondering, “what do you mean by understand?” Think about how you will assess student understanding. When stating learning outcomes, use active verbs that suggest suitable assessments. For example, “Students will be able to predict how relative changes in concentrations of reactants or products will affect forward or reverse reaction rates” is a specific and assessable learning outcome that would indicate whether or not a student actually understood the concept of equilibrium.
    4. Determine appropriate assessments. 
    5. Construct an inclusive, active lesson plan.

    The goal of these sessions is to continue to develop your teachable tidbit(s) incorporating active learning/formative assessment strategies to create an inclusive learning experience that will help students achieve the intended learning outcomes. Learning activities should engage students’ previous knowledge and help them construct new knowledge and engage in deliberate practice of important skills. Ultimately, your learning outcomes, learning assessments, and learning activities should all align with each other. 

    Upload your materials

    Each group will create a folder in this Google Group Work folder where you will work collaboratively on your teaching module (tidibt) for the week. 

    Participants also have access to tidbits from other groups and other institutions by going to the MoSI Host Campus Folder that holds all of the folders associated with the workshops and group work. 


    3.1: Group Work Sessions is shared under a CC BY-NC-SA license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by LibreTexts.