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Collaborative Online Learning: 15 Activities for Engaging students in Online Classes.

 

Nothing is more frustrating to a teacher than lack of attention from students. You have spent several weeks or even months working on some project that you thought would be a breakthrough, but nothing happens. Situations like this are very common in modern learning because a lack of interest to engage in teamwork is widespread. 

When a group of two or more students work together to complete an activity, discuss a question, or collaborate on a task, we call it collaborative learning. The intended consequence of accomplishing tasks together is to help students learn the complexities of solving a problem and promote deeper learning through doing.

Group work not only helps students learn the course material better; it also provides opportunities to develop additional skills. While working in groups, students need to harness group members' strengths, address group learning needs, manage time, divide a large project into small tasks, cooperate, negotiate, resolve conflicts, and reach consensus. These are useful skills in collaborative workspaces and future careers.

In this article, I will introduce you to 7 online collaborative tools that can help you to solve the issue of lack of interest for good.

When I talk about online collaborative tools, I refer to web-based tools that enable teachers and students to perform a wide range of tasks, such as interactive discussions, online collaboration activities, sharing and accessing electronic learning resources, and many more others. Here is the collection of great online collaborative tools that I have gathered for you, enjoy!

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Padlet

The first tool on my list is a great one for sharing digital content and improving the engagement of the students. It has two versions (for school and for business), and provides a controlled learning environment that helps the teacher to enhance the writing process. Here are some of the functions you can perform with Padlet:

Teachers can create special brainstorm sessions where they invite students to discuss some topics, all with excellent opportunities provided by Padlet, such as sharing Internet findings, ideas, and visual aids.

Book review sessions are another great lesson idea. Create a session dedicated to a book and invite the students to share their reviews and comment on the ideas of others.

Students can use Padlet as a portfolio for showcasing their best school projects on their profile.

It has a feedback tool to provide an assessment of students’ work.

Links to various multimedia resources are provided.

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TodaysMeet

This is a toolbox for teachers that takes classroom management to another level. With TodaysMeet, this task becomes so much easier because of a wide variety of available functions. They include:

Discussion forums

Empowerment of students by letting them have some teaching responsibilities

Possibility of including an unlimited number of students to the class

Meetings

Presentations

Online seminars

Movies and silent activities

Review of work by classmates

Socrative

Virtualizing student content has never been easier! Socrative is an innovative platform for teachers and students that is essentially an application for effective classroom management. The developers of this great app have put a special emphasis on having fun and on interactive activities, which are perfect for increasing the engagement of students. The features of Socrative are below.

Activities that engage students

Quizzes featuring the most interesting topics from the lesson

Reporting to enhance the students’ understanding of the class on an individual level

Chat and discussion rooms to promote online collaboration

“Space Race” feature that encourages friendly competition among students with intergalactic quiz bowl

Feedback to improve the experience of the students throughout the course

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Twilda

One of the most popular online collaborative tools for teachers is this “web-based meeting playground.” It allows the class to perform Internet research collaboratively and share their findings with each other and the teacher. This is a great tool for those teachers who want to prepare K-12 students for writing college papers because it involves a lot of writing assignments. Here are the tool’s features:

Online meetings

Online discussions

Sharing of images, email, and documents

Voice chat

Screen capture

Unlimited storage

Total moderator control

Collaborize Classroom

This is a topic library where teachers can find, create, share, and download inquiry-based discussions on any educational topic. As a result, the teacher receives a unique URL which can be sent to the students to begin the lesson. The teachers are free to:

Select hundreds of pre-written lessons

Create their own lessons

Start a discussion with students

Receive and give feedback

Scribblar

This is another popular tool that received a lot of great reviews from teachers (you can read them on the website). It is an online collaboration platform that is perfect for students because it provides many incentives for teamwork as well as great technology to engage in creative work. It also allows for adding more classes to one discussion, and you can save the chat transcript. The main features of Scribblar are:

Online chat

Upload of images and documents

Activities for individual students

Discussions

Separate projects

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1. Think-pair-repair

In this twist on think, pair and share, pose an open-ended question to your class and ask students to come up with their best answer. Next, pair learners up and get them to agree on a response. Get two pairs together, and the foursome needs to do the same thing. Continue until half the group goes head to head with the other half. If your students are online, breakout rooms in your conferencing software let you do the same thing virtually. 

2. Improv games

If your classroom is museum-level quiet no matter how you try to liven things up, try some low-stakes (read: not embarrassing) improv activities. In the three things in common game, pairs figure out the most unexpected things they share (this can also be done online in breakout rooms). Or challenge your students to count to 20 as a group with one person saying each number – but no one is assigned a number, and if two people talk at the same time, everyone starts again at 1. (If some students are in the room and some remote, you’ll need classroom audio with full-room coverage for this to work. 

3. Brainwriting

You’ve probably tried brainstorming, but have you tried brainwriting? In this approach, students are given time to come up with their own ideas individually before sharing them out loud or posting them to an online whiteboard or other shared platforms. Building in space for individual reflection leads to better ideas and less groupthink.

4. Jigsaw

Help students build accountability by teaching each other. Start by dividing them into “home groups” (4 or 5 people works well). Again, breakout rooms in Zoom or Google Meet make this simple even if everyone is remote. Assign each person in the group a different topic to explore – they’ll regroup to work with all the students from the other groups who are exploring the same idea. Once they’ve mastered the concept, students return to their home group and everyone shares newfound expertise.

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5. Concept mapping

Collaborative concept mapping is a great way for students to step away from their individual perspectives. Groups can do this to review previous work, or it can help them map ideas for projects and assignments. In pre-COVID times, you may have covered classroom walls with sticky notes and chart paper – now there are many online tools that make it simple to map out connections between ideas.

6. The one-minute paper

How much could you explain in one minute? At the end of class, set a timer and ask students to record their most eye-opening revelation or biggest question. This activity lets students reflect on learning and build writing skills – plus you’ll get a window into their understandings and misunderstandings.

7. Real-time reactions

When students are watching a video, a mini lecture or another student’s presentation, have them share their real-time reactions. This helps students spot trends and consider new points of view. You can set up a hashtag to allow for live tweeting, or use the chat function in your conferencing software.

8. Chain notes

Write several questions on pieces of paper and pass each to a student. The first student adds a response (use a timer to keep things moving quickly) and then passes the page along to gather more responses. Multiple contributions help build more complete understanding. A digital alternative involves using shared documents that multiple students are invited to edit. Then your class can examine the responses and identify patterns and missing pieces.

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9. Idea line up

Choose a question that has a range of responses, and then ask students where they stand – literally. If you’re not social distancing, have them come to the front of the classroom and organize themselves in a line, based on where on the spectrum of answers they find themselves. In a blended classroom or a physically distanced one, get them to place themselves on a virtual number line instead.

10. Mystery quotation

Test how well students can apply their understanding of an issue or theoretical position. After they’ve explored a topic, show them a quotation about it they’ve never seen before. Their task is to figure out the point of view of the person behind the quotation – and justify it to the class. Students can debate this issue in small breakout groups before beginning a whole-class discussion.

11. Idea speed dating

Have students cycle through your space, or through breakout rooms in Zoom or Google Meet, sharing insights about a topic or their elevator pitch for an upcoming project. As they present their learnings multiple times on several “Speed dates”, students’ presentation skills and perspectives will grow.

12. Peer review

The process of peer review is as old as academia, and it’s never too early to start. Have students swap drafts of their essays, proposals or lab reports, and then come up with comments and questions for each other. Make sure to be clear about what the goals are (using rubrics helps). For example, students could identify compelling arguments, unanswered questions and holes in logic.

13. Quescussion

Ever played Jeopardy? Then you’re ready for quescussion. It’s like a standard class discussion but only questions are allowed (students call “Statement!” if someone slips up). If you play this game at the beginning of the course, the questions can help shape your course. If you have students both in the room and calling in from a distance, make sure the remote learners get equal airtime and that your audio system is picking up student voices clearly.

14. Sketchnoting

Instead of taking traditional lecture notes, try getting your students to sketch a picture  that represents what they’ve learned during class. Remember, it’s not about the quality of the art – it’s about how drawing prompts students to visualize their understanding and look at their learning from a different perspective.

15. Empathy mapping

Take a page from the designers’ handbook and get students to explore deeper by embracing a perspective. It’s deceptively simple – write down what a person says, thinks, does and feels. The ability to slow down and immerse yourself in another point of view is valuable. In design thinking, empathy maps help designers create better products for users. But this process can be just as valuable for analyzing characters from literature, historical figures or political stances.

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Now it`s up to you

Using proper online collaborative tools is an important condition for increasing the interest of your students in teamwork. While all tools listed in this article are suitable for this task, have a look at each of them to find out which one will work best for your class. As a result, you will be able to reap all the educational benefits and reach more students than ever before. Enjoy the world of online education and have fun!

Online Reading Time: 10 Free Reading Websites for Elementary Level Students.

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Teaching Tips for Making Grammar Fun and Interactive for Students.

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