Developing effective teamwork
Prepare students for giving feedback

Effective teamwork in the English or composition classroom should be directed toward accomplishment of at least two of the course objectives.

It would be silly for writing teachers to waste time on team building activities when they could apply the benefits of teamwork to authentic writing tasks.

Carefully chosen and implemented, a collaborative learning activity can allow the writing teacher to

• Broaden the students' audience.

• Individualize instruction.

• Provide timely formative assessment to all students.

• Teach students to work in teams.

Without such care

• Some students will suffer hurt feelings.

• Class time will be wasted.

• No improvement in student writing will occur.

• No effective teamwork will occur.

Preparation for collaboration

The first thing you must do to achieve effective teamwork — effective in terms of your class objectives — is match a collaborative learning activity to your teaching situation. You need to consider

• The students' degree of writing competence.

• The return on investment for your time.

• Team creation challenges

• Activity logistics.

We'll take a quick look at each of these.

Students' writing competence level.

Success in getting effective teamwork from Josh and Caitlin on a writing task depends a great deal on whether their individual levels of writing skill fit the team's task.

With a little training and a script you provide, novice writers can provide peer coaching to other novices to help them prepare to write. Students don't need to have good writing skills to help each other in the pre-composition stages of the writing process.

Having students giving feedback on completed compositions works best with students who are competent writers. You can choose peer conferencing (a more palatable term for what is traditionally called peer review) or peer editing.

Return on your investment.

Effective teamwork doesn't just happen; effective collaboration techniques must be learned. You have to set up the learning environment so that learning can occur.

Setting up a collaborative learning activity takes longer than you think it will. You have to do a good bit of prep work before your initial presentation to students. Then you need to provide support and continuing supervision as they are giving feedback to peers on their writing.

My rule of thumb is that you must use a specific collaborative activity for every major writing assignment for half year or more to equal the value of the time the activity requires. For me in a 12-week class, that means using an activity 10 or more times.

Team creation challenges

Collaborative learning activities present some logistic challenges for teachers.

It is unwise to let students choose their partners or teammates. Assigning teams requires you to not only consider the students' strengths and weaknesses as writers — you don't want them badly mismatched — but also their personalities and peer group affiliations.

You also have to be prepared to shuffle teams if you see some are not working well.

Activity logistics

Finally, you have to make sure students have time to work together, either in class or outside, if you expect students to do effective teamwork.

If you cannot arrange for all students to meet with their partners or teams, it is not fair to impose a collaborative learning requirement.

Training for giving feedback

The best way to train students in effective teamwork for the particular collaborative learning technique you choose is

1. Describe the strategy.

2. Demonstrate the strategy.

3. Discuss the components students should have noticed in the demo.

4. Reinforce the training by providing "cheat sheets" they can consult as they try the technique themselves.

The details of the actual training will, of course, vary according to the type of collaborative activity you choose.

Supplemental materials

Provide written and/or retrievable aids readers can consult. Make sure your materials are clear and concise. You could use

• Checklists.

• Your grading rubric for the assignment.

• Sample questions.

• Evaluation forms.

I suggest you make the materials available in several places and formats: paper handouts, posters and online accessible documents or web pages.

Be available as a resource

Inexperienced writers may be able to spot when something is wrong but not able to explain clearly what they sense the problem is. Make sure students know they can come to you for help in identifying a problem.

Also, be available to suggest alternative approaches or even to intervene if the teams don't work well.

Effective teamwork in the writing classroom results in students learning to write better.

No matter how well the team members get along socially, if they do not learn you must intervene to see that learning happens.

Share student testimonials

Make a point of praising students who help their peers write better. If possible, post testimonials or thank-you notes from happy, improving writers on your bulletin board.

Students with a bent toward bullying may see being helpful an alternative way to get some recognition from their peers. Also, students who are shy about participating in collaborative learning activities will see how effective teamwork could benefit them.