Teaching and Learning blog

Nevertheless, a series produced with Storythings, celebrates women both inside and outside of Pearson who are using technology to transform teaching and learning and improve outcomes for students. 

Pearson’s Emily Lai on trust, children, and information literacy

A little-known fact about me is that I was once a librarian. Before I entered the world of educational measurement, I completed a degree in Library and Information Science and worked in an archive. This fact is ironic because there was a time in my life when I actually suffered from library anxiety.

This occurred during my sophomore year of high school, when I had an English assignment to write a research paper summarizing and critically evaluating evidence of some paranormal topic of my choice (my topic: people who claim to recover memories of “past lives” through hypnosis.) Our class made several visits to the library of a local university so we could carry out research. At that time, there were no full-text electronic databases to consult, just stacks and stacks of books, hard-cover periodical indices, and a computer-based card catalog. Even this was intimidating to me.

I remember spending way too much time trying to figure out how to search the collection and then retrieve the results — only to find that they weren’t all that relevant to my topic. I should have approached the reference librarian (the most under-utilized resource in the library!) but I was too shy. I felt this was something I should figure out on my own.

Eventually, I overcame my paralysis in the library and learned to see it as a treasure trove. The tools to support information retrieval projects like this have vastly improved, thanks in no small part to technology. But technology has also made it even more important that students develop information literacy: the ability to diagnose an information need, identify what kind of information is needed, search and retrieve information, evaluate its relevance and quality, and use it responsibly to answer a question or solve a problem. It’s more important today simply because the internet and mobile technology enable ridiculous amounts of information to be instantly accessible to us, anytime and anywhere.

Recently watching my 9-year old daughter try to research rights and responsibilities of citizens for a school assignment brought me full circle. Although she was sitting at home (not in a library) and using her computer (not bound books) to look for sources, she ended up with about the same result as my fruitless search from years before — a small collection of marginally relevant information sources of dubious credibility for the topic. She didn’t know what question she was trying to answer or how to describe what type of information would be best suited to answering it. She was simply googling her way through the assignment.

If ever there was a teachable moment for information literacy, this was it. So we talked about how to search for information and how to judge whether that information is valuable for a given question. We talked about mis-information and the need to critically interrogate information sources to figure out if they are trustable.

If you’re a parent like me who is concerned that your kids aren’t picking up these skills at school, or you’re just interested to hear more perspectives on the topic of trust and technology, make sure you check out the next episode of the Nevertheless podcast, entitled The First Click.

We’ve heard from Emily Lai, Ph.D., twice before. Last year, she shared the story of her work in Jordan to improve learning opportunities for the children of Syrian refugees. More recently, she offered her tips for parents and teachers on helping students improve their information literacy.

The Components of Collaboration

“Most of us know what collaboration is, at least in its most basic sense,” says Emily Lai, Ph.D.

“It means working with others to achieve a common goal.”

Emily is Director of Formative Assessment and Feedback for Pearson. Her work is focused on improving the ways we assess learners’ knowledge and skills, and ensuring results support further learning and development.

“We’ve been reviewing the research, trying to figure out what we know about collaboration and how to support it. For example, we know that collaboration skills have an impact on how successful somebody is in all kinds of group situations—at school, on the job, and even working with others within a community to address social issues.”

Teaching Collaboration in the Classroom

Teaching collaboration skills in the classroom can be harder than expected, Emily says.

“When a teacher assigns a group project, oftentimes students will divide up the task into smaller pieces, work independently, and then just shove their parts together at the very end.”

“In that case, the teacher likely had good intentions to help develop collaboration skills in students. But it didn’t happen.”

Checking all the Boxes

“Tasks that are truly supportive of collaboration are not easy to create,” Emily says.

Digging deeper, Emily says there are three sub-components of successful collaboration:

Interpersonal communication – how you communicate verbally and non-verbally with your teammates.

Conflict resolution – your ability to acknowledge and resolve disagreements in a manner consistent with the best interest of the team.

Task management – your ability to set goals, organize tasks, track team progress against goals, and adjust the process along the way as needed.

Emily says she understands how difficult it can be for educators to check all three boxes.

Before beginning an assignment, Emily suggests teachers talk to students explicitly about collaboration: what makes a good team member versus what makes a difficult one, as well as strategies for working with others, sharing the load responsibly, and overcoming disagreements.

During group work, she says, observe students’ verbal and non-verbal behavior carefully and provide real-time feedback.

“Talk with them about how they’re making decisions as a group, sharing responsibility, and dealing with obstacles,” Emily says.

“In the classroom, it’s all about the combination of teaching collaboration skills explicitly, giving students opportunities to practice those skills, and providing feedback along the way so those skills continue to develop.”

“The research shows that students who develop strong collaboration skills get more out of those cooperative learning situations at school.”

Teaching Collaboration at Home

Emily is a mother of two daughters, 4 and 8.

At home, she says, there’s one part of collaboration that is especially valuable: conflict resolution.

“Most often, it comes in handy on movie nights.”

“The 8-year-old tends to gravitate towards movies that are a little too scary for the 4-year-old, and the 4-year-old tends to gravitate towards movies that are a little too babyish for the 8-year-old.”

“It would be easy to intervene and just pick a movie for them, but my husband and I do our best to stay out of it,” Emily says.

“We’ve established the procedure that they have to negotiate with each other and agree on a movie, and now they have a collaborative routine in place.”

“They know they get to watch a movie, and we know they’re learning along the way.”

“Taking turns in conversation is another big one for the four-year-old,” Emily says.

“She doesn’t like to yield the floor, but it’s something we’re working on.”

“I know from the research that if my daughters learn these collaboration skills, they are more likely to be successful in their future careers.”

Sharing the Latest Research

This week, Emily and two of her colleagues are releasing a research paper entitled “Skills for Today: What We Know about Teaching and Assessing Collaboration.”

The paper will be jointly released by Pearson and The Partnership for 21^st Century Learning (P21), a Washington, DC-based coalition that includes leaders from the business, education, and government sectors.

“We teamed up on this paper because we both believe collaboration is too important for college, career, and life to leave to chance,” Emily says.

It is the first in a four-part series on what is known about teaching and assessing “the Four Cs”: collaboration, critical thinking, creativity, and communication.

“P21 is the perfect partner for this effort,” Emily says.

“Our partnership signifies a joint commitment to helping stakeholders—educators, parents, policy-makers, and employers—understand what skills are needed to be successful today, and how to teach them effectively at any age.”

To download the full version of “Skills for Today: What We Know about Teaching and Assessing Collaboration,” click here.

Three executive summaries of the paper are also available:

• For employers
• For educators
• For policymakers

Pearson LearnEd originally published this article on April 24th, 2017, and it was re-posted here with permission.