Book Review
“Collaborative Learning Techniques:  A Handbook for College Faculty” by E.F. Barkley, K.P. Cross, and C. Howell Major
Reviewed by Dr. Anja Mueller

“Collaborative Learning Techniques” is an excellent resource for anybody who wants to implement group projects in their classroom.  It is clearly and concisely written and covers all aspects needed for effective implementation.

The authors start with a convincing and well-referenced discussion about how (and why) collaborative learning techniques help the students learn on a higher level where they reach deep understanding, are able to apply the knowledge, and are able to evaluate the knowledge in a wider concept.

Group learning techniques are generally more difficult to implement than your average lecture.  Therefore, the authors present a guide for the preparation of group projects with chapters on how to orient the students, form the groups, structure the actual learning task to make it effective, facilitate student collaboration (including how to solve personality problems in groups), and grade and evaluate the outcome of the group project.  A lot of problems are discussed here that are commonly seen with group projects (i.e. only one student does all the work), and several methods are presented to avoid these problems. 

After discussing these general problems, the authors list 30 different collaborative learning techniques.  All major teaching methods are included with several techniques:  discussion, “reciprocal teaching” (i.e. let the students teach other students), problem solving, graphic information organizing, and writing.  The description of each teaching method includes a general description and goal of the technique, a description of the preparation needed, a step-by-step procedure, actual examples of how this technique has been used in various fields, a discussion on how the technique could be implemented in an online course, possible variations and connections to other learning techniques, general observations and advice from teachers that have used this technique, and references for further study.

I found these technique descriptions very useful:  each gave me an idea of when the technique is useful, how much preparation is involved, and what the possible pitfalls are, including pitfalls in grading the projects.  Furthermore, the examples gave me additional ideas for how to vary a technique to optimize its use in my specific case.
           
I was actually looking for methods to improve the effectiveness of my teaching in a specific lecture:  a large lecture course for beginners in organic chemistry.  This course has a lot of content that is generally standardized, and it is the basis for several other fields.  I had found that I was not able to convince the majority of the students that they would need the information later on, nor was I able to give them the connection to the other fields, since I was running out of time.  I was looking for a way for the students to make that connection, as well as to get them to learn for understanding and application instead of learning the material by heart.  Even though this specific case restricts the options of what one can do, I found several techniques that can be implemented in a large lecture course with a lot of content and little time.

Overall, I recommend this book to anybody who wants to implement group projects; I believe I will be able to incorporate group projects effectively into my lectures to improve student learning with the help of this book.

Title: Collaborative Learning Techniques:  A Handbook for College Faculty
Authors:  Elizabeth Barkley, K. Patricia Cross, and Claire Howell Major
Price:  $ 37.00 (Paperback)
Publisher:  Jossey-Bass
Year:  2004
Pages:  288

ISBN:  0787955183