Winning online: Peer learning rules
Michael de la Maza, PhD
Data Scientist | Professor of Business Analytics and Machine Learning @ Hult | Amazon Bestselling Author | Angel Investor | Machine Learning PhD | Long Jumper
I’ve got a few additional findings about online learning from my colleague, Rob Rubin (BCG, Demingway, edX). The last article I posted on this topic had tips for the presenter, these are findings are about the participants and how they can learn more and have better learning outcomes when they interact with one another. Zoom and similar tech allows for participants to engage with one another in a single large room or to split off into breakout groups for smaller discussions.
Discussing challenging problems leads to better outcomes than working individually
The original research was done using (text-based) chat rooms with subsets of students. Zoom also allows for breakout room functionality which gives you video options instead of just text-based chat.
Incentivizing people to help one another yields still better results
By making participation in the chat or other breakout setting a part of the grade, participation went up and so did learning outcomes. Another study used ‘badges’ as indicators of level of participation. In a work environment, grades aren’t available as an incentive, but maybe a badge type incentive would work? What other incentives have you seen work to encourage chat /breakout room engagement?
What else do you do to help the participants get more out of their online meetings or learning experiences? Any other suggestions for encouraging interaction?
A few more resources on the topic: