While instructors know the importance of successful small group collaboration, and the value of the skills required to execute them, students continue to prefer to work independently. The promise and development of recent online tools, however, and streams of recent research on small group collaboration, continue to produce less-than-satisfying or…

The authors describe several types of classroom assessment techniques (CATs) and cognitive scaffolding procedures that they have developed over the years. They then bring the procedures together in a sample lecture/group learning class presentation.

Dissatisfied both with lecturing to 125 students three times a week and with the idea of having teaching assistants conduct seminars, the author devised a new method of handling his class. With administration consent, he arranged to lecture to the whole class (by then, 275 students) twice a week and to conduct 11 seminars of 25 students each.…

IN A STUDY OF THE EFFECTS OF CERTAIN VARIABLES ON THE OUTCOMES OF A COURSE IN INTRODUCTORY PSYCHOLOGY, PRETESTS AND POSTTESTS WERE ADMINISTERED TO 180 STUDENTS IN FOUR PSYCHOLOGY CLASSES AND TO 50 OTHERS. VARIABLES WERE CLASS SIZE, INSTRUCTOR, AND LECTURE VS. DISCUSSION METHOD, AND THE TESTS WERE MEASURES OF CHANGES IN STUDENTS' SELF-CONCEPT,…