This problem solving activity can bring a group together and assist the members to successfully solve a problem that may occur at their working life as teachers and trainers . By working together in order to solve the problem it is expected that the participants will also enhance their communication and teamworking skills as well as their planning skills. All these skills play an important role on the development of personal, social and learning to learn competence.
Number of participants: 9-12
Duration: approx 120 minutes
Objective: The aim is for the learners to enhance not only their problem solving skills, but also to develop team working skills, as in order to solve the problem they have to work altogether, communicate with each other and excange ideas. Additionally, the participants will in the end reflect on their own learning.
The class is divided into groups (preferably two or three) and the participants of each group have to come up with a hypothetical classroom scenario that needs to be solved, taken from participants working life as teachers and trainers. They should make it specific and write it down.
After all the groups have finished and each group has a paper with a classroom scenario written on it, they have to exchange scenarios, so that each group will take the scenario created by another group and not their own scenario.
Now each group has to come up with solutions to the scenario provided, using the following sheet to help focus on each Step.
One person is nominated by each group to take notes and one person to feed back to the class.
The groups cannot ask the group-designer of the scenario for clarifications but they need to use their imagination and try to solve the problem. In the end, all the groups discuss with each other about their approaches to the problems to be solved and each group is asked if they would have a different approach if they were asked to solve the scenarios of the other groups.