Teaching
95 Brazilian Young Adults
by
Isabel Murphy
SIL International
Christina de
Jong, GLP:
Has anyone applied the Principles and
Practices of Dialogue Education in a large group setting? What
worked? What didn't work? Describe what was great, and what
was not so great. Share ideas as to how to engage each and every
participant effectively. Is that even possible when your group
consists of more than twenty people?
Isabel Murphy,
SIL:
I have had that experience, giving
a course in cross-cultural communications to 95 young Brazilian
adults. The first thing I did was send out a SOS to my Global
Learning Partners, and we received some good tips.
Megagroup & Minigroup
It was suggested that we have groups
within groups, i.e. a Megagroup with (I believe) 4 smaller groups
within. The smaller groups reported to the leader of their megagroup,
who organized a coordinated response, representing each minigroup,
to the question in discussion. They did not get confused but
I sometimes did, sorting out minigroups from megagroups! They
also named their megagroup, and developed some attachment to
"their" group.
We first divided
into groups based on birthdays... another suggestion from GLP.
The only trouble with that was the time it took to call out
every day of the year in order to discover the birthdays of
all the participants! It did create some camaradie though, as
they discovered who shared their birthday month or day.
Conditions
The conditions were not ideal, i.e.
I had to do more orally than I would have liked, for lack of
a flip chart or blackboard to write up the tasks for the day.
So I met with the megagroup leaders and passed out the questions
and gave them the orientation. They in turn, oriented their
minigroup leaders, who in turn oriented their groups. It worked
but, of course, with such a mass, we are bound to lose some
time just in the organizational part.
Learning Aids
The hardest part was to make sure
we had all the necessary learning aids for such a large group,
so we were very busy before the course, trying to pull stuff
together. We had to mark a certain place for each megagroup
to meet, but we had to do most of it within the same large auditorium.
Success!
Although it was organizationally difficult
to get things going each day, I would have found it just as
hard trying to keep a group of that size spellbound using any
other method. Here we have the difference between "audience"
or "participants". I DID have PARTICIPANTS.
Immediate feedback
to the methodology was positive, with many of the participants
commenting on how much more they felt they were learning due
to the group interaction. But I was never really sure (how do
we know that they know?) until this year when I received a call
from someone who had taken that course, inviting me to do another
one for a group of (don't faint) 650 to 700 young people
between 18 and 24 years. She said that since it was such a large
group, my style of teaching (her words) was the only one she
knew of that would make a difference..."what you teach,
people remember," she said. Now I say this fully
recognizing that it is not me, but the method, but it
provided me with some concrete feedback!
Now
A few weeks later I began teaching
another course (which I am doing now) and one of the students
was also a student from that same course of 95 participants.
She told me that their group of students have done better than
others (who took other more conventional courses) in their cross-cultural
adaptation all around the world... nearly nil atrition rate,
compared to a much higher rate among others of their members.
She also said, "people remember what you teach" (of
course, it ISN'T what I "teach" but what they LEARN).
Having taught
using the lecture method peppered with the occasional group
participation, I certainly notice the difference myself in how
I feel about the courses I facilitate, and the results. I have
had 3 experiences where people complained about group work and
I concluded that part of the trouble was in our learning designs
(not enough variety). We have worked on that... doing more discussion
in pairs, different groupings, clearer task orientation, and
that has made a great difference.
I am using a
bit more technology at the moment (I was in doubt about that
after reading that recent report on the course), such as a multimedia
projector where I outline the tasks we expect to cover. I also
use pictures etc. on the computer, videos, etc. but always with
the intention of kicking off a dialogue about what they are
seeing.
So the next question is: how can I get 650 to 700 people actively
involved?
The big trouble
is affordable material for so many, and we cannoy charge anything
for the courses we teach. So, megagroups worked and the birthday
division worked (but needs speeding up). We tried a "walkabout"
which was well set up, but we had to do it outside of the buildings,
and some of the participants felt like they were "out of
class", so we lost momentum on that.
Also, with so
many, I do not recommend a lot of moving and shuffling around,
regrouping etc. It would be ideal to set it up with large
table groups, like my organization did at their recent international
conference. That worked well for us, and we were a group of
over 800, I believe. We had table groups for some discussions
and a different group for some other discussions. We had PowerPoint
presentations with a speaker, and then case studies based on
the questions raised in the PowerPoint presentation. Our main
question was wondering if our opinions really would make any
difference to our corporate boards...but it DID trickle up.
Our answers to given questions were given to a committee which
prepared a synthesis of responses which were later shared with
the whole group, so we got feedback, but not immediately.
I am not sure
how to handle a needs assessment for such a large group, but
with the group I am working with now, I received several comments
expressing appreciation for giving them a chance to express
themselves even before the course began.
