Professor Michael Wesch, of Kansas State University, recently described how his students distributed the tasks of finding and reviewing articles, and then sharing their summaries so that in effect, all students were aware of the content of all articles summarized.
The key:
All summaries were due 36 hours before the next class period, leaving those final 36 hours for all students to read all the summaries posted by their fellow team-members.
By the time of our next class, all 16 students had read 5 articles and been exposed to the main ideas of 94 articles. This created an amazing foundation for deep conversation. I think all of us were literally on the edge of our seats, finding connections and debates across the literature at a level I have *never* experienced in an undergraduate setting. I count it as a huge success, and I would highly recommend it to any other faculty out there looking to spark an engaging conversation with your students.
I’m planning on writing up a howto, describing ways to replicate this process with tools available to you for free.