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MCC Daily Tribune Archive

Teaching Tips from Your TCC


Send-a-Problem

Our Spring 2012 teaching tips are gleaned from Dr. Elizabeth Barkley’s text, Student Engagement Techniques: A Handbook for College Faculty (Jossey-Bass, 2010).

The author will be our guest at the Teaching and Creativity Center’s June 15 event, and copies of her book can be borrowed from each of the TCC rooms (5-091 at DCC and 12-201 at Brighton). Those who attend the June 15 event will receive personal copies that day.

Our third teaching tip this semester is a student engagement technique (SET) that is designed to promote collaborative learning. It can be modified for an online course. The purpose of this two stage activity—solving problems and evaluating solutions-- is to give students the opportunity to practice together the thinking skills needed for effective problem solving and to help students to learn to compare and discriminate among multiple solutions.

In this SET groups of students each receive a problem try to solve it, and then pass the problem and solution to a nearby group. Without looking at the previous group’s solution, the next group works to solve the problem. After as many passes as seem useful, groups analyze, evaluate, an synthesize the responses to the problem they received in the final pass and report the best solution to the class.

Step-by-step directions:

1.  Decide how many problems you will need to have all groups working simultaneously.

2.  Decide how you will present the problem. Consider attaching each problem to the outside of a file folder or envelope into which groups can then put their solutions.

3. Think carefully about the instructions you will give the students regarding time limits and the order in which they should pass the problem (such as clockwise). Being clear with the students can help to reduce any confusion.

4. Form groups of 4-6 students, describe the activity, give instructions, and answer questions.

5. Distribute a different problem to each group and ask them to discuss the problem, generate solutions, choose the best solution and then record it and put it into the folder or envelope.

6. Call “time” and instruct teams to pass their problem to the next group.

7. Repeat the process as many times as it seems useful.

8. Students in the last group review and evaluate the responses in the envelope or folder, adding any additional information they wish.

Example:  Urban planning class

The professor asked students to offer solutions to a residential rezoning problem. She gave each group a manila folder with the data needed to solve the problem and two 5 x 7 index cards. She asked students to discuss and agree upon a solution, write the solution on one card, put it into the envelope, and pass the envelope to the next group. The next group followed the same procedure and then sent the envelope to a third group that evaluated the responses and selected the one they thought was best. The final group had to explain their rationale for their choice.

SET #27, pp. 267-271

Julie Damerell
Transitional Studies
03/07/2012