Cooperative Learning for the Workplace

One of my favorite things about conducting a flipped classroom, is that it allows for the inclusion of so many cooperative learning activities.  I love watching as students take the teacher role and teach each other.  However, cooperative learning has its challenges.  How does a teacher insure that each student benefits from the cooperative learning activity?  How does one avoid having "bogs"--students who do all the work and "logs"--students who just sit there and take up space?  In small groups I give jobs to each person so that each person is responsible for something and those jobs switched throughout the activity.

Today, I used cooperative learning with large groups and with an application to the real world.  This activity was a lot of fun.  It got crazy, but that is normal for my classroom.  For this activity, I told students that we would be part of a "corporation".  I am the CEO; I give the paycheck (aka: grade).  They would be working in committees.  Each committee was assigned a category of regular verbs.  They would be responsible for teaching (or really reviewing because this is level 2) the conjugations, providing a clever way of remembering how to conjugate these verbs, and providing a list of common verbs in the category, as well as what those verbs are in English.  To make this activity work like it would in a business place, each committee had to chose a foreman (or "patron").  I, as the CEO, would communicate with this foreman.  Within each committee, they had to divide into sub-committees.  One would be in charge of creating an engaging presentation; the other was in charge of creating an activity which would allow the rest of the class to participate in practicing the grammar point.  Students had 40 minutes to work.  I called a "board meeting" 15 minutes after they had started working to touch base with the foremen and to make sure that each group was on track.  At this time, I told them what I saw that was working, what wasn't working.  I asked them about their method of presentation, as well as the type of activity that their group would be doing.  I talked to them about their committee members who were being "logs" and gave them ideas of how they could get those team members involved.

It was a great experience.  The students amazed me with their enthusiasm.  It was fun to watch the foremen as they moved within their groups to delegate jobs.  I loved hearing the conversations about what types of practice activities would be the most beneficial for their classmates.  As any CEO would do, I guided them when necessary and encouraged good behaviors.  Tomorrow the groups will present.  We'll see how those presentations go.