Sharing the load: Joint note taking and summaries
Design Pattern Tags : Academic Skills, Connected learning, Online Collaboration, Online learning, WIL online
Sharing the load: Joint note taking and summaries March 2016
Sharing the load enables students to apply and construct collective and collaborative note taking and summaries. Joint note taking and summaries allows students to demonstrate their understanding of the topic or concept in a personal and meaningful way.
Rationale Sharing the load gives students the opportunity to manage knowledge; develop the ability to critically think and communicate using social technologies.
Learners/Context Sharing the load has been created to develop collaborative online note taking and summaries. This activity is designed for small groups to construct notes. The notes are transferrable to Blackboard for student opinion.
Alignment This activity gives students the opportunity to develop RMIT Graduate Attributes; 21st century learning and work readiness.
Instructions/Processes
Prior to Semester
Decide in which lecture the joint note taking will be introduced
Decide which tool will be used: Google documents are likely the most widely known; easily accessible and widely adopted at RMIT
Go to your Google Drive to create a shared folder for students’ notes to reside
Right mouse click inside the Google Drive to create a new folder, named: Sharing the load
Share the folder with all students by adding their Google accessible email addresses through Google Groups
Ensure “Can edit” has been selected for sharing by students to create their note taking files
Create a Google document in the folder as a table to display teams, themes and links to be added to team created resources (notes and published resources)
For more detailed instructions on how to create and use Google docs as collaborative tools visit: https://www.google.com/docs/about/
At the beginning of the Semester
Explain to students the concept of collaborative note taking
Explain the value, opportunities and process in joint student note taking and summaries
Identify the first lecture in which joint student note taking and summaries will occur
In the tutorial, reinforce the process and revisit the Google Drive to assign students to their respective groups
Practice the joint note taking in the tutorial
The following lecture share the load of joint note taking
In the following tutorial, ask students to comment on each other’s notes
Repeat steps 9-15 for the rest of the semester
EXTENSION
Student groups can post their notes and opinions about the topic into a blog
Create the Blog in Google sites or students can create their own blogs and invite you into their blog
Each week or theme students create a new document in the shared folder and take notes in the collaborative writing space
Students publish the week/theme content in a wiki; host a forum; create an infographic to visually summarise the key content or devise a podcast
Other tasks could include notes on current affairs, cases studies or text summaries, using Ethrepad
In Bb Mobile Learn create a wiki for synchronous note taking
Ask students to peer review the blog or infographic Conditions/Critical Success Factors Knowledge of content
Knowledge of Google docs and drive
Knowledge of Blackboard and Bb Mobile Learn
Knowledge of Blogs, Forums and Inforgraphics
Knowledge of Etherpad, an open source tool, which is hosted internally within RMIT
Resources/ Technology Related Patterns
