Jigsaw in practice: a collaborative workshop about collaborative learning

This workshop will introduce participants to a number of ways of incorporating the Jigsaw technique into teaching practice. The Jigsaw technique is a method of turning groups into collections of mutually supporting small groups and encouraging scaffolded collaborative learning (Aronson 1978). It has been shown to be successful in terms of student satisfaction, retention and performance. The basic principle is easy to understand and to apply – a topic is split into smaller topics, with each student or group of students being responsible for researching a small piece of the topic each, which they then teach to their fellow students when the whole group convenes. We will begin with a short overview of the technique, giving some examples of courses that have successfully used it including a recent Higher Education Academy funded project at the University of Glasgow. Results and feedback from this project will also be given. In addition, we will show how the technique has been enhanced by incorporating some of the tools available as part of the University of Glasgow Moodle. Participants will then split into small groups according to interest and work together in order to design a Jigsaw lesson around a pre-agreed topic. Facilitators who have an understanding of how to use the Jigsaw technique will be on hand in order to provide help and advice. Each group will then present their lesson plan to the whole workshop, and there will then be a general discussion about the exercise and a consideration of how the technique might be adopted and adapted for particular subjects depending on who is teaching or being taught