Scaffolding Student Collaboration in an Agile Classroom

Agile learners hone their ability to solve increasingly complex challenges. The more complex the challenge, the more collaboration with a cognitively diverse group is required. An objective of Agile Education is to build students’ capacity for collaboration. In order to do so, the following principles of collaboration are held:

• Collaboration is a skill that can be grown through frequent practice.
• Agile Education integrates the practice of collaboration throughout the Learning Sprint.
• Skills practiced may include openness to others’ ideas, empathy, conflict management, group decision-making, mutual support and encouragement, peer feedback, and leveraging each other’s strengths toward shared learning outcomes. 
• Cross-strength groups, in which each student brings unique and complementary strengths, are most adaptable to varying challenges.
• Groups composed of 3-5 members allow for the inclusion of multiple strengths while mitigating the unwieldy communication that often results from larger groups. 
• Stable group membership is preferred because:
  • Trust grows from knowing one’s team members well.
  • Rotating membership frequently creates volatility in team dynamics. This leads to fragility of trust. 
  • Resilience strengthens as groups work through successes and failures over a significant enough time span.
  • Peer accountability and support mature with trust and resilience, leading to high-performing teamwork.
  • Healthy collaboration is never fully mastered. It requires continuous attention and improvements to meet the dynamic needs of individuals and the group. 
• Students may progress through successive levels of collaboration. These levels are depicted in the Spectrum of Collaboration.
  • One intent of Agile Education is to grow students’ capacity to collaborate.
  • This may mean starting out at lower levels if it is appropriate for the classroom and incrementally progressing through higher levels.
  • Regardless of which level students are working at, the classroom utilizes the Learning Sprint and Visible Learning Artifacts. These provide structure, support, and scaffolding throughout all levels of collaboration.
  • The Spectrum of Collaboration describes the relationship among students. It assumes there is always some level of collaboration with the teacher.
  • Higher levels of collaboration can be inclusive of some elements from the prior levels.

The Spectrum of Collaboration is also in the Agile Educator Guide.