TEACHx 2026

Encouraging a group of students who are strangers to support each other and work through the anxieties and insecurities of learning together can be a considerable challenge for educators. While there is a significant body of research that supports the effectiveness of collaborative learning, Kaendler, Wiedmann, Rummel and Spada have demonstrated that an instructor’s ability to facilitate “quality” interactions between students in collaborative work is crucial for the success of this method (Kaendler et al. 2015). When done well, collaborative learning teaches students’ emotional resilience as they face their own social insecurities and supports inclusive classrooms by centering the identities and experiences of individual students within collaborative relationships. In this workshop, we will work on our ability to foster collaborative classrooms by first experiencing and creating collaborative learning for ourselves. We will introduce and experience 15 different techniques, ranging from quick collaborative brainstorming to in-depth, long-term collaborative learning reflections. We will then work together to document and review our learning. Participants will leave the session having identified cooperative learning strategies to apply to their own teaching and with a plan to address any challenges they foresee in using these strategies in their classrooms.