SciGirls Seven tip: “Girls benefit from collaboration, especially when they can participate and communicate fairly.”
Make sure students understand that collaboration is important, and make collaboration easier by having students play an icebreaker after groups are assigned
Assign each student a procedural role necessary for the group to function to create the most equitable environment.
Only place the number of kids in a group necessary to complete the task, too many or too few collaborators leaves kids feelings distracted and underutilized.
If the Navigator is too controlling when pair programming, have that student write down instructions instead of speaking them.
When introducing version control, set students up for failure to facilitate group discussions; it’s crucial that students develop good modes of communicating.
When preparing students for industry jobs, create chaos in team projects so they can learn to handle the environment.
Teach hierarchical task analysis using Requirement Cards to sort through 100 requirements engineers have created for a robot cleaning up a nuclear disaster.
Build a paper airplane instead of the PB&J exercise for a less messy, more extensible algorithms introduction activity.