Buzz Groups are the Best

In fall 2016, our Creative Pedagogy PDC read Collaborative Learning Techniques: A Handbook for College Faculty by Major, Barkley, and Cross. From the Google Books description:

“A mountain of evidence shows that students who learn in small groups together exhibit higher academic achievement, motivation, and satisfaction than those who don’t. Collaborative learning puts into practice the major conclusion from learning theory: that students must be actively engaged in building their own minds. In this book, the authors synthesize the relevant research and theory to support thirty-five collaborative learning activities for use in both traditional and online classrooms.”

The first part is dedicated to making the case for collaborative learning. This was the weakest part of the book, to be honest; a lot of the “mountain of evidence” the authors cite is anecdotal at best, without rigorous, well-designed assessment of the true impacts of collaborative learning techniques (CoLTs). Of course, we as a group were already interested in CoLTs, so this section also wasn’t especially necessary for us? If I weren’t already on the side of the authors, and I was reading this to decide whether CoLTs were for me as a professor, I might not have read the rest of the book. But, as I said, our group chose this book due to our pre-existing interest in the topic so we went ahead and read the other sections, which were a lot better in my opinion. I especially liked the chapter called Structuring the Learning Task, which is very useful for those who might struggle with how to clearly explain the CoLT to students and get them to buy in to the assignment.

Each member of our 8-person group (the PDC membership fluctuates from semester to semester) decided to choose one of the activities from Part 3 to implement in class and report back to the group. As a political science professor, modeling civil discourse is a key feature of my classes, so I chose a CoLT from Chapter 7: Techniques for Discussion. I was familiar with Think-Pair-Share already, so I went with Buzz Groups for my technique. For this activity- which is actually a semester-long series of activities- students are assigned to a small group of 3-5 students. Then, the professor gives the groups a discussion question or two to ponder for a few minutes. After that, the professor asks each group to share a little of what they discussed. This might sound simple, but Buzz Groups have a slight twist: students are assigned to the same exact group for each discussion activity throughout the course. The goal is for students to build a rapport over the semester, which is important for helping shyer students feel comfortable enough to speak up, but also leads to a group trust; everyone can feel free to share their true opinion, because they know everyone else in their group. This was what grabbed my attention about Buzz Groups, because as you might imagine I often have difficulty getting students to speak openly about tough political issues.

After trying Buzz Groups in my Law and Society class- a very discussion-heavy class that explores issues at the intersection of the law and society at large- here is what I would say are the pros and cons of this particular CoLT.

Pros:
1. Shy students definitely spoke more. They didn’t always speak in each activity, but I could tell as the semester went on they spoke up more. Even 2 or 3 more times of speaking is better than being silent all semester.
2. After the first couple of activities, the time spent explaining what do was essentially non-existent. We also saved time by eliminating those awkward minutes when, at the beginning of a discussion activity, students look around for who to ask to be in a group with. All these saved minutes added up by the end of semester!
3. On evaluations, students reported making friends and study partners through their Buzz Group. As we know from How College Works, these connections help students achieve more and makes them more likely to retain in college.

Cons:
1. Groups can be dominated by 1-2 strong personalities. Once in awhile a group had a particularly opinionated student who drove discussion in each class, limiting the ability of everyone to contribute. When this happens over and over in the course of a semester, the other members can feel like they never got to talk.
2. When students get more comfortable with each other, they are also more easily dragged off topic. They shift into catching up, discussing favorite TV shows, etc. So, while I would say that increased comfort leads to better, more honest discussion, it can also lead to less time on task unless someone in the group is good about bringing everyone back.

As you can probably guess from the title of this post, overall I highly recommend Buzz Groups. They worked so well and were so popular in Law and Society that they are now a fixture in a couple of my classes. When reporting back, my colleagues also found Peer Editing, Role Play, and Critical Debate useful for their classes. Based on their feedback, I began using Role Play in my Law and Society class. For that assignment, students play a real-life stakeholder in a debate on a critical law and society issue, like the death penalty or the use of racial profiling, so that we can have an informed discussion. For example, one student plays Robert Nozick and someone else plays John Rawls for a debate on whether the US government should emphasize social justice. Overall, this activity is also quite popular, and really sold me on the idea that less lecturing does not have to mean students learn less content (the whole point of CoLTs).

Epilogue: In spring 2017, our group facilitated a session on CoLTs at the Lilly Conference in Bethesda, MD. We presented our chosen techniques, discussed how they went in our classes, and then walked participants through both Peer Editing and Buzz Groups so they could be prepared to implement these activities in their own classes. I had never been to a Lilly Conference before, and while some sessions were more useful than others, I highly recommend one (there are several around the US) to anyone interested in evidence-based, creative teaching practices.