Collaborative Learning Boost: Writable Walls Increase Peer-to-Peer Interaction by 45%

Whiteboard paint is a powerful tool for enhancing collaboration in the classroom. In today’s educational environment, student collaboration is an essential part of successful learning. As the culture of teaching evolves, educators and school officials are continually looking for new ways to foster student engagement and creativity. Writable surfaces, such as walls, lapboards, and desks coated with whiteboard paint are helpful tools for creating a lively, interactive atmosphere for instruction.

Such surfaces enable students to actively participate in the learning process by facilitating brainstorming, group discussion, and joint project work. They provide students with the freedom to engage with lesson material, with their peers, and with the classroom space, thus enhancing classroom relations and original thinking.

In fact, research on active learning environments shows that shared vertical writing surfaces like whiteboard walls produce up to 45% more student-to-student interactions compared to desk-only setups.

In the following article we’ll look at some arguments for using vertical, non-permanent writing surfaces (VNPS) like whiteboard walls in the K-12 classroom. We’ll also explore ways you can avoid potential problems related to their use and thus ensure the best possible learning outcomes for your students.

Reasons for Using Vertical Writing Surfaces

Some reasons for incorporating vertical non-permanent writing surfaces like whiteboard painted walls into your classroom are as follows.

• Enhanced cooperation among students

The walls foster group involvement, as students naturally gravitate to them to share and discuss their ideas. The vertical layout of the walls makes it easy for learners to see, get involved in, ask questions, and refine one another’s work. When engaging in cooperative classroom projects, a wall coated with whiteboard paint is an essential aid to learning.

During lessons, you can divide your students into small groups to enhance their skills at communication and teamwork. To minimize intra-group conflict, urge them to use the wall in a democratic way, where everyone has an equal chance to express their views and write down their ideas without worrying about criticism or ridicule.

• More Dynamic Student Engagement

Students find the process of writing on a whiteboard painted wall to be less intimidating than writing on a paper medium such as a notebook or flip chart. The fact that the content they create on the wall is impermanent reduces their fear of making mistakes. This in turn encourages more risk-taking and critical thinking than they would engage in if they were writing with a pencil on paper. The ability to easily erase and redo their work encourages students to make needed revisions, think iteratively, and learn through the process of trial and error.

Trial-and-error learning is a problem-solving method where students gain knowledge by trying out a series of actions and observing their outcomes. During the process they hold on to successful strategies and discard unsuccessful ones. The approach involves repeated tries, with each try bringing learners closer to a solution by either verifying a successful strategy or revealing an error to be avoided. Using this method, students are more likely to “think out loud” and modify their ideas visibly. Whiteboard painted walls are ideal tools to use in this approach to enhancing critical thinking.

• Superior Mobility and Lively Participation

When students use whiteboard painted walls they’re physically standing, using their upper bodies and arms, and moving around.  These actions raise their energy levels, stimulate their brains, and keep them alert. The mobility factor helps learners engage dynamically with the task at hand and interact actively with their classmates. As a result, peer-to-peer communication is heightened and students can more easily arrive at answers to written questions or solve math problems.

Research has shown that large non-permanent vertical writing surfaces, which necessitate moving back and forth while writing, foster dynamic thinking. This is true because when people move around in front of a wall-sized canvas, they tend to think fast, and come up with many ideas. The act of walking back and forth in front of a whiteboard painted wall while writing stimulates the brain.

In fact, researchers have found that moving around on foot is associated with improved recall, cognitive performance, and reduced mental regression. That’s because walking increases blood circulation to the brain. This in turn leads to the discharge of a protein that stimulates the growth and strength of brain cells. As a result, creative ideas and mental pictures can emerge more easily than they would if a person were seated.

• Greater Visibility and Assessment for Teachers

With whiteboard painted walls in place, teachers are more easily able to scan students’ work.  After doing so they can quickly gauge each group’s progress by noting mistakes, correcting errors, or making comments without disrupting the workflow. This allows the instructor to give instantaneous feedback, either through direct intervention or by encouraging group discussion.

• Greater Equality and Accessibility

Vertical non-permanent surfaces like whiteboard walls level the playing field, since everyone in each group has an equal chance to contribute. This is in contrast to seated arrangements, where one student is able to dominate the action by holding the paper or hogging space. Writing on a shared whiteboard painted wall thus promotes inclusivity, equality, and fairness in classroom problem-solving and other tasks.

• Encouragement of Group Responsibility

Since the work they do on whiteboard walls is by nature public, groups feel responsible for their individual contributions, thus fostering a sense of accountability. In this setting, learners are more likely to explain and justify the reasoning behind what they wrote on the wall. This process fosters a feeling of respect and cooperation among group members. No one feels put upon or ignored, and a friendly atmosphere is generated.

• Reduced Emphasis on Individual Accomplishment

While students work on a whiteboard wall, the emphasis shifts from individual accuracy in problem-solving to group understanding and teamwork. This quality is in line with today’s philosophy of building a thinking classroom where collaboration and mutual regard are key factors in educational success.

• Enhanced evolution of mathematical thinking

When it comes to mathematics, learning new concepts and solving problems become easier when teachers and students have access to whiteboard painted walls. This is especially true for group problem solving. By working together and iteratively finding answers to math problems, students expose each other to diverse approaches and strategies. This process expands their problem-solving skills by prioritizing reasoning and peer-to-peer communication over rote memorization.

Possible areas of concern to address

When using whiteboard walls, students become skilled at communicating mathematically, explaining their thought processes, asking questions, and participating in discussions. However, it’s important to keep individual accountability in mind when using whiteboard walls for group work in math and other subjects.

When groups are rewarded or recognized based on the individual knowledge of each member, students are more inclined to instruct and assess one another. This approach leads to better learning outcomes. However, if groups are allowed to get away with offloading all the work and thinking onto one student, this doesn’t occur.

You can take steps to reduce this problem. For example, you might assign roles to individual students and then actively monitor the group as they work on a problem.  You may next ask for the answer from the student who’s least apt to give the correct response. If they fail to come up with the correct answer, you’ll be able to hold the whole group accountable.

Another area of concern is the possibility that one group of students might copy the work of another group. One of the above-mentioned advantages of vertical surfaces like whiteboard walls is that they allow students’ work to be visible to the teacher at all times. However, the walls also make the work visible to other students toiling on the same problem or question.

This quality can make it easy for learners to copy other people’s content.  Once again, in such a case, you can actively monitor each group as they work on a problem or question to keep this from happening.

To sum up, by enhancing interaction, engagement, and creative thinking, whiteboard painted walls help to ensure positive learning outcomes for students. In this way they offer an ideal means for teachers and learners to remain at the forefront of today’s competitive educational environment.

Summary

Article Name

Collaborative Learning Boost: Writable Walls Increase Peer-to-Peer Interaction by 45%

Description

Writable whiteboard walls increase classroom collaboration by 45%, enhancing peer-to-peer learning and active student engagement.

Author

Susan Anspach

Publisher Name

ReMARKable Whiteboard Paint

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