Collaborative and Community-Based Experiential Learning

The activity utilizes both collaborative pedagogies and community engaged learning (CEL). It provides an important opportunity for students to apply course concepts outside of the classroom where their work can have a broader impact. Addressing complex societal topics such as pandemic response requires multidisciplinary collaboration. Students must think beyond their own training, translate their disciplinary knowledge for broader audiences, and engage empathetically with a variety of perspectives. Within each team, students must come to consensus on decisions and organize shared tasks. This collaborative and applied learning is reinforced across several different activities throughout the course in addition to the community partner assignment.

• Gain an applied understanding of concepts from disaster studies
• Build appreciation for the work of a non-profit organization that supports vulnerable communities in disaster contexts
• Develop a deeper understanding of the social complexities of the disaster in question
• Interact in a team to identify and equitably divide up tasks, set internal deadlines, and collaboratively produce a cohesive final product
• Practice writing a concise, evidence-based analysis for an educated public audience
• Become familiar with journals that publish disaster-related research in the social sciences

Materials

• Written descriptions providing information about the community partners and what they are looking for in a final student report
• Instructions for how to interview community partners
• Rubrics for self and peer assessment
• Detailed assignment instructions and criteria

Prep Work

• Prior to the start of the term the instructor works with ORICE to discuss the goals and design of the activity and then identify community partners which would be a good fit for the activity
• ORICE prepares written descriptions that provide information about the community partners and what they are looking for from the students in the partnership
• Every two weeks, 30 minutes of class time was allocated for group work where students could work together on the project. This time is built into the course schedule and included in the syllabus prior to the start of the course

Method

Organization and Planning

• Students are first given descriptions of the 15 different community partners selected by ORICE. Students then vote on their top three community partners and are organized into groups based on their preference.
• Students meet in their groups to pick a platform for communication and develop a set of tasks to divide the work out for the assignment. The instructor provides guidance on selecting platforms for communication and collaboration.
• Students are given class time to meet with their group, conduct further research on their community partner organization, and develop a set of interview questions which they will ask their community partner over a phone call or Zoom meeting.
• Groups submit their initial interview questions through Canvas. The instructor works with ORICE to give feedback on the draft questions.
• Students revise the questions based on the feedback they receive.

Conducting and Summarizing the Interview

• The group then elects a communication lead who is the one responsible for coordinating with the community partner. The communication lead schedules an interview time with the partner.
• Students meet with the community partner and take notes to capture the partner responses to the interview questions.
• Following the interview, students collaborate to create a shared set of notes from the interview.

Final Report and Assessment

• Using the notes from the interview, students create a final report that includes a summary of the interview synthesized with academic literature. Student teams determine the format of the final report in collaboration with the community partner. Some teams produced infographics or videos that community partners could use on social media. Other teams created a more traditional report that community partners may draw upon for grant writing purposes.
• After submitting the final report, students complete a self and peer assessment using iPeer to reflect on their peers and their own contributions to the group process.
• Once the final projects have been submitted, the instructor and ORICE work together to select the ones that will be given back to the community partners.

Grading

The assignment is worth approximately 15% of the total grade. The weight of the assignment relative to the overall course grade was made to be a balance between not making it worth so much that students would become stressed yet giving it enough value, that students would take it seriously and reflect the amount of work involved for students.

Example Materials

Infographic created by students for Richmond Addiction Services Society

Potential Modifications

• Provide a more explicit division of roles and responsibilities for group members to complete the various elements of the assignment. Students could sign up for their specific piece so that it was clear to all students what their responsibilities were. This could help to address some of the student feedback around challenges regarding workload distribution and unequal participation.
• Make improvements to group formation by making sure that all students indicate their preferences for mode of collaboration (working online or in-person) to make sure all students in a group wanted to engage with the activity in the same way.
• There is potential to integrate a two-stage reflection assignment, with one midway through the term and another at the end of the term to help students reflect on what they learned through the activity and how it integrates with other concepts in the course.
• Another potential modification would be to have students submit some elements of the assignment individually and some as a full group to be able to assess student contributions more fairly. It may also be possible to have students develop the interview questions and conduct the interview as a group, but then complete the final report individually.

In which course did you use collaborative learning? What is the general nature of the course and how many students are generally in the course?

“Global Pandemics” (SOCI 290) is a second-year course, which I taught in 2023. It has no prerequisite, so about 70% of the students were from Arts, and the remaining were from other Faculties. This course explores the subfield of disaster studies. We focus on the idea of social vulnerability and specifically how social inequalities shape social groups’ capacity to anticipate a disaster, to cope with it as it is happening, and recover from it. We study COVID-19, as well as historical pandemics and other types of disasters that intersect with pandemics, such as the climate crisis, the opioid crisis, gender-based violence, and settler colonialism.

What does collaborative learning mean in your discipline/course? Why do you incorporate collaborative learning? What outcomes were you hoping to achieve?

Disaster studies is an evolving field that necessitates multidisciplinary collaboration and knowledge translation. It requires the ability to work with other people and think beyond your own training. There are numerous transferable skills beyond the explicit curriculum content that students obtain from pursuing an Arts degree, including empathizing with other’s perspectives, discussing and weighing arguments, and drawing evidence-based conclusions. I want to equip students with those skills, so I integrated collaborative learning into many components of the course. For example, every week we did a face-to-face case study in teams.

Please describe how the activity worked. What sequence of steps do students do to complete the final project? How did it fit into the overall structure of the course?

This assignment was designed in collaboration with Arts ISIT and UBC Office of Regional & International Community Engagement (ORICE). The first step is students reviewing 15 descriptions of our different community partners that were put together by ORICE. Each one-page write-up provides information including what the community partner does, what they are looking for in the final student report, and the details of how to have an interview with them. Each student indicates the top three community partners they would like to work with. Based on their preference, they are put into small groups and given their group assignments. I also ask the students to come up with a set of tasks to divide the group work, and to pick a platform for communication.

Once the students receive their group assignments, they meet with their peers in class and develop a set of interview questions which they will ask their community partner over a phone or Zoom call. A communications lead is also elected for the group, who will be the one coordinating with the community partner. This kind of outreach is new for many students, and they hone skills from it such as appropriate follow-up response, how quickly to respond, and what to emphasize more in future communications.

The next step was scheduling and holding the interview. The students collaborate on the notes from the interview and turn it into a final report. Every 2 weeks, 30 minutes of class was allocated for group work where the students could work together on this assignment.

What was your role as the instructor in the process? What types of structure and support did you provide to students?

A key piece was checking in with the groups every two weeks during dedicated class time. In addition, every group submitted in Canvas their initial interview questions, and I worked with ORICE to give them feedback on those questions, based on which they revised the interview questions. I also gave the students guidance on selecting a communication platform. They submitted their write-up on Canvas for feedback and afterward the students did self and peer assessment which also I reviewed. At the end, in addition to grading the assignments, I connected with ORICE to select the ones that would be given back to the community partners.

How did the activity work in terms of grading and feedback?

This assignment was worth 15% of the total grade. I made it a small amount to reduce team anxiety, particularly given the potential for group workload distribution issues. But on the flip side I got feedback that the assignment itself was a lot of work, and so it should have had more weight in the course. I will likely increase it to 20% of the total grade next time.

Did you have to deal with situations where students were concerned about their grade in relation to their contribution to the group work?

Midway through the term, I had one student approach me regarding their grades. We talked it through, I gave them some suggestions, and they felt that it had been resolved sufficiently and did not need me to make grade adjustments. At the group-level, the qualitative peer feedback which I reviewed indicated some tension about decision-making processes within two of the groups, but the quantitative peer feedback scores were relatively high. I did not pursue changing the grades for any student.

What learning benefits have you seen? 

I think the biggest benefit is cultivating a concrete connection to the sometimes-abstract material--being able to meet someone who works in the field and realize what it means to support specific communities in relation to a particular disaster. The students were able to apply course concepts in their write-ups and analysis. They also engaged with external sources outside of the class, sharpening their library skills, literature searching skills, and synthesis skills to support their arguments.

The communication aspect, not only with their team members but with the community partners, was impactful in terms of the written initial communication, and then the oral communication during the interview.

Working in a team requires students to identify the tasks that need to be done and break them down ahead of time. Some students in a second-year course may not have mastered these skills for themselves on their own, so working in a team requires them to be more transparent and explicit with goal setting and delegation in a timely manner.

The students also benefited in terms of intended audience and knowledge translation as they considered what would be the perception of a community partner and any reader who may not have a sociology background. They produced reports with accessible language that needed to be nuanced with underlying themes and concepts relating to published research.

I could also see that a comfort level was emerging in the class, friendships were starting, and there was a lot more chatter towards the end of the term as compared to the beginning. However, the course was multi-access, meaning students could participate face-to-face or online, which affected some group dynamics. This is a key component of the assignment structure that I will revise next time.

Did you run into any problems with the multi-access nature of the class?

I would email the class beforehand and specify that there will be dedicated teamwork time during the upcoming class. I suggested that the groups organize a Zoom meeting during that time, if any of their members preferred to do it online. There were students who were doing the online version actively and staying up to date, but there were others who were quite absent, and this had an effect on the experience of other members of those students’ groups. Next time I will ensure students are matched in teams with other students who intend to participate in the same way (either online or face-to-face).

What feedback did students share about their experience with the Collaborative Learning activities?

I think that what stood out for me was the frustration among students regarding workload distribution, feeling that they had done more work than someone else and still got the same grade, or feeling that their voice was not heard in the team. The course was without prerequisites so you have students from many different faculties talking about disasters in different ways, which could be beneficial for the group in terms of voicing your opinion or building respect for unique perspectives, but it also presented some barriers.

The students also talked about challenges of finding time to work together, which was surprising, because they were given class time, but this may have been due to the multi-access nature of the course with some students doing it remotely.

What are some changes or improvements which you wish to include in future?

I could impose a more explicit division of labour for creating the pieces of the assignment, and I could have students formally sign up for their specific piece so that I, as well as the group members, are aware of the tasks undertaken by each student. I could have them submit their work individually and also as a team so I could assess it. I am considering having students come up with the interview questions and do the interview in groups, and then do the reports individually.

Group formation is another component I intend to improve. In the first two weeks of the organizing the students in teams, I had to move a couple of people around, and if someone did not sign up for a community partner, they got placed into a group by default. The next time if a student is not responsive, I will wait until I hear from them before adding them to a group. Also, as I mentioned earlier, finding time to work together was difficult for some groups with some of their members doing the assignment online, so I would make sure that students in the same groups wanted to engage with the class in the same way.

I may also consider including a two-stage reflection assignment--one midway through the term so that students could benefit in the moment, and another at the end of the term so students could reflect on the takeaways.

What are your primary suggestions for the instructors about coordinating interaction between students and community partners? Are there ways that you feel a community partner could have been more involved?

I think that community-engaged learning at a second-year level is considerably different than at a third- and fourth-year level. The community-facing outputs of second-year students are generally not as robust as fourth-year students, for example. Given this, ORICE and I tried to have minimal time demands from the community partners. Each partner was responsible for having initial planning conversations with ORICE, contributing to a one-page write-up where they outlined their expectations for the assignment, and participating in the student interview. I am sure it would be useful to have more input from community partners about the assignment structure and progress, and but I feel cautious about this in terms of draining their time. I would also suggest that if instructors do not have long-standing relationships with the community partners, they should reach out to ORICE or CCEL the first time. Both these centres offer pedagogical guidance and have built long term relationships with community organizations. They can match you with suitable community partners and support the relationship before, during, and after the course.

Do you wish to share anything further?

I think that student motivation is important for community-engaged learning (CEL). CEL requires students who really want to be there. Whenever possible, I suggest making CEL an optional course component and providing students with choices about which community partners they are most interested in working with.

This assignment would not have been possible without Tamara Baldwin and Gaylean Davies from UBC ORICE and the numerous community partners who shared their time and expertise.