BALEAP 2023 conference

"Collaboration is commonly a stated learning outcome at university level and features in discipline specific courses. Consequently, EAP has a role in preparing students to collaborate more effectively. The literature on collaborative assignments tends to focus on short, intensive in-class tasks rather than extended semester-long

assignments that may be found in EAP courses. This has resulted in a lack of discussion around strategies and approaches to collaborative assignments in EAP. We are conducting complementary PhD studies, looking at collaborative assignments (e.g. group presentation, group essay) in EAP. One study focusses on teacher role and attitude, while the other is looking at how to fairly assess collaborative assignments. Early findings from in-depth interviews with EAP practitioners in a range of contexts show that collaborative learning and collaborative assessment rarely feature in teacher training or in-service professional development. Consequently, practitioners seem to rely on their intuition and own experiences of collaborating when approaching collaborative assignments in their own classrooms and courses. This can lead to potentially contradictory expectations and very different student experiences. Some practitioners are very hands-off and leave students to navigate the process themselves. Others have more scaffolding in place, with scheduled progress meetings or reports. Still others are more deeply involved, actively participating in the students’ collaborative workspaces and operating almost as part of the group. Similarly, there are different approaches utilized when it comes to assessment. Some practitioners focus solely on the product or artefact produced by the collaboration while others look at assessing the process of collaboration, using a variety of mechanisms. The aim of this session would be to raise vital areas of discussion surrounding student collaboration, generating ideas that will feed into future training materials for EAP units and practitioners to develop and refine their approach to collaborative student assignments.

Since collaboration is, and should be, a feature of EAP, it would be valuable to our community to deconstruct issues related to student collaboration. This has been voiced by our own research participants, who have appreciated the value of simply talking about this topic and recognised that it can benefit their future approach. Session Design This session would be a guided discussion, with short presentation inputs in the areas of beliefs, facilitation and assessment, leading to focused discussion and debate questions to try and begin the construction of a more coherent pedagogy of collaboration in EAP and the wider Higher Education (HE) community. Sample discussion questions could include: Beliefs Why do I think what I think about student collaboration? How does my experience of collaboration impact my approach to student collaboration? Facilitation What is the role of the teacher in a student collaboration? How can we best facilitate student collaboration? Assessment How can we, and should we, differentiate between students in a collaboration? How can we grade a collaborative assignment fairly? These are vital areas for robust discussion to move our practices forward."