Paul O. Myhre, Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion, with Brandon Cornett

Paul O. Myhre currently serves as associate director at the Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion. Prior to coming to the Wabash Center nearly a decade ago, Myhre taught at Saint Louis University, Pacific Theological College in Suva, Fiji, and was involved with pastoral ministry in Alaska and Wisconsin. His recent written work includes an edited book, Introduction to Religion Studies, published in 2009 by Anselm Press; a chapter “Pedagogical Issues and Shifts over the Last Twenty-Five Years in Theological Education in North America” for the book Handbook of Theological Education in World Christianity, to be published in 2010; a chapter entitled “Exploring Archival Materials: Undergraduates in the Archives” for Undergraduate Research in Religious Studies to be published in 2010; and an essay published in a 2009 edition of ARTS Journal entitled “Encountering Navajo Cosmology through Sand Paintings: Teaching a Method for Engaging Visual Texts.”

Collaborative Research as a Form of Collaborative Pedagogy: Background and Theory

The idea of collaborative research is not new. Faculty and students have engaged in various forms of collaboration in research and learning for decades. What may be new is the idea that faculty and students can collaborate in meaningful ways that will prompt original research and insights. Also new is the idea that students can engage in original research without constant prodding or over-the-shoulder gazing by the professor and the notion that undergraduate students in the humanities possess a capacity to provide original contributions on their own or in partnership with a professor.

In part, the work of collaboration requires first a reappraisal of what original research entails, how students might engage in it, and how professors might carve out specific tasks in the research process that are learner specific. In short, can the project be divided such that the student can work independently of and in collaboration with the professor on distinct units of research so as to contribute something significant and “original”?

Second, collaborative pedagogy requires a reappraisal of what constitutes authoritative knowledge. Faculty have long maintained that they are the arbiters of what knowledge is and that students have not yet encountered enough of the material germane to the field of study or possess the skills requisite to make that determination. In collaborative pedagogy, authority for making decisions about what constitutes knowledge is redistributed and becomes a negotiated domain where faculty and students participate in its construction.

Third, collaborative pedagogy recognizes the domain of knowledge about anything larger than any one individual can determine. Hence, students can know something about a given topic as well as a professor and may develop lines of inquiry that are quite different from those of their teacher. The cultural, social, and psychological regions of human knowledge production are diversified, and collaborative pedagogy recognizes that one dominant voice may not provide insight as thoroughly as multiple voices speaking about a particular topic.

Jane Vella has written much about education and adult learning in particular. Her comments on adult education name well some of the salient dimensions of collaborative pedagogy: “[It] is based on mutual respect, honors the learners as the subjects of their own learning, and trusts in the power of human beings to work together and communicate in honest dialogue” (xvi).

Collaborative pedagogy is a method for teaching and learning that respects all participants in the learning environment as having something specific to contribute to the overall learning of a group — even if that group is only two people, a faculty member and a student. Quoting Johnson, Johnson, and Smith, Ted Penitz offers basic principles of this pedagogical method. It is a means by which “knowledge is constructed, discovered, and transformed by students. Faculty create the conditions within which students can construct meaning from the material studied by processing it through existing cognitive structures and then retaining it in long-term memory where it remains open to further processing and possible reconstruction.”

This pedagogical method advocates active learning as the dominant mode for student knowledge acquisition. Barkely, Cross, and Howell articulate the method as including three basic principles: intentional structuring of assignments; co-laboring work in study, research, and writing; and student responsibility for learning. Citing Matthews, they assert, “Collaborative learning occurs when students and faculty work together to create knowledge…. It is a pedagogy that has at its center the assumption that people make meaning together and that the process enriches and enlarges them.” Most of the research around collaborative learning suggests that student learning is heightened through it, that it increases capacity for subsequent study in related and unrelated subjects, and that it aids student retention of knowledge acquired through collaborative means. Overall student satisfaction with one’s collegiate experience has also been shown to improve when students engage in collaborative research.

Collaborative pedagogy is also a method for teaching and learning that does not presume to know what the outcomes might be before a study is undertaken. It is by design collaborative and requires all persons involved — faculty and students — to articulate goals, develop research strategies, and contribute specific pieces or parts to solving or wrestling with an overall research question. Units of study and paths of inquiry are typically divided so as to make the work manageable for students and faculty.

Collaborative undergraduate research (UR) requires faculty to be adept at dividing research projects into various components that are learner specific or malleable enough so as to invite co-teacher/learner development of specific and concise projects that may be attainable within a semester. In short, it means that a research project requires teacher and student to be in active communication with each other about the nature of the overall project and to have a capacity to determine together what the student can actually undertake as part of the overall work. Careful arrangement of plans for the overall project, determination of what might be needed for it, and outlining of specific goals and action steps toward completion of the project can contribute to the success or failure of the UR project.

One of the challenges faculty face in UR projects involves assessing the level of a student’s capability to engage in collaborative work. The idea that knowledge is constructed, discovered, and transformed by students is not new. However, the notion that faculty and students can develop UR learning environments where undergraduate students can contribute specific insights to an overall research project is. It requires an ability on the part of the teacher to diagnose what a student can accomplish in one or multiple terms of study. The collaboration could be compared to the work of building a house. Not all carpenters or skilled tradesmen will work on all facets of the project; they will use the skill they have to provide what the house needs. For example, plumbers focus on all aspects of plumbing. They do not attempt to do the wiring or roofing. So students might also be regarded as skilled workers who can contribute in significant ways to UR projects. Matching student skill and aptitude with discrete learning goals can achieve significant results and expand student learning overall.

According to Brandon Cornett, a Wabash College student who worked with me on a recent UR project:

The most interesting work I did involved my study of Native American culture. The things that I encountered while studying Native Americans were foreign to me. As I would discover, studying something completely new is exciting and provides an opportunity to engage an UR project without preconceived notions about what facets of the study might most occupy the work. In our UR project, we started with the basics. Our study began with separating the idea of religion and worldview. This method enabled me to understand the foundations of a culture, paying attention to the details, while operating within a scope narrow enough not to be overwhelming. None of the classes I had taken before were taught like this, but it was something that I gladly applied to every course thereafter. Using the elements of Native American cosmology that I had learned in an introductory course to Native American religions, I began my UR project on Mississippian cosmology. I knew that the UR project would be a lot of work since it involved trying to cover such a diverse grouping of cultures around the Mississippi river valley that were associated with Mississippian culture in the eighth and twelfth centuries CE. Dr. Myhre suggested that I focus on a specific area called Cahokia mounds located near St. Louis, Missouri. Limiting the scope of our research was incredibly beneficial. It allowed me to pay particular attention to the details rather than searching for overarching patterns. This was one part of the overall study with which Dr. Myhre is engaged. Not many other researchers have extensively explored Mississippian cosmology through geoform alignments, archaeological artifacts, and remnant tribal stories. Every week that we met, we made progress on our research. Most of the things we investigated were new and exciting. We made connections and speculations that others had not yet published. The key to our successful research was always keeping the details in perspective.

The collaborative work involved analysis of gorget designs and astronomical maps, geographical maps of Mississippian sites showing locations of mounds and other geoform structures, archival work, and reading remnant tribal stories. The research is ongoing and may eventuate in a publishable paper about Mississippian cosmology written in correlations between gorget designs, astronomical movements, traditional stories, and mound alignments.

Providing a student with the requisite skills in order to have a modicum of research success constitutes a foundational step in collaborative undergraduate research (UR). As undergraduate students are provided with specific research skills and exposed to a range of options for research, their interest is often heightened. Teachers who value student contributions may find that the student will continue to work on the project long after the conclusion of the semester and the grade for the project has been determined. This was the case with the Wabash College student involved with this particular recent UR project.

Brandon Cornett considered UR as a learning experience that starts from zero. For him, “The classes that have been most successful and that I most enjoyed in college were those that started from ground zero. Rather than unloading information on students and dissecting the material throughout the semester, classes that start from ground zero emphasize the most fundamental elements of the topic, then use that foundation of knowledge to explore the subjects of the class.”

Collaborative research sometimes means starting from ground zero with a question or questions about something that is an object of interest — like “Why are Mississippian mounds aligned along certain axis lines, and how might these be correlated to movements of the sun, moon, and stars? What might gorget designs tell us about Mississippian cosmology, and is there any correlation between them and mound alignments?”

Working collaboratively on a UR project requires a willingness to be open to questions posed by a student about the aims and purposes of the study, clarification and reclarification of tasks, and careful articulation of who is assigned to what aspects of the project. UR also requires faculty and students to engage in regular conversations about the details of what is being learned through the targeted research and putting together the pieces as co-team members engaged in a collaborative research project.