Online Teaching Techniques: Using Team Challenges to Foster Collaboration

(W Aug 19, 2-3:30 pm Eastern Daylight Time)

Whether for STEM, foreign language, arts, or humanities, applying information is one of the most effective ways for a student to increase their level of understanding and for a teacher to assess mastery of knowledge and skills. Team challenges include any activity that asks a cooperative group to use what they have learned to accomplish a goal. For my own purposes, I will differentiate challenges from competitions by defining a challenge as an outcome that is assessed with a mixture of subjective qualitative and quantitative measurements. Team challenges result in a wide range of solutions rather than predictable and comparable outcomes. Participants in this workshop will break into groups to work on a challenge that requires knowledge and aid from each member of the group. Solutions will be presented to an audience of workshop peers (our “class”). Outcomes will be judged using a rubric that is created by the class, so personal knowledge of the difficulties facing those presenting their solutions will be inherent in the final assessments. As a final step we will return to our roles as teachers and help each other think through ways that this teaching structure can be used in our own classes.