Troika Consulting: Adaptation for Class Community Building

Activity

Liberating Structures, Ongoing engagement

Troika Consulting: Adaptation for Class Community Building

Maha Bali

Mia Zamora

Autumm Caines

Get students used to supporting each other without always turning to an ‘expert’ for solutions.

Tech needed: Breakout rooms

Duration: 5-30 mins

Student preparation: Minimal

Educator preparation: None

ACTIVITY PURPOSE

Get students used to supporting each other and helping each other without always turning to an expert or teacher to solve problems; also useful for quick problem-solving.

USEFUL FOR

You can use this any time during the semester to encourage students to self-reflect on challenges they’re facing and benefit from their colleagues’ input. At the beginning of the semester it could be a challenge related to learning online last semester; in the middle of the semester while working on a large research paper, they could discuss challenges in that paper for example.

PREPARATION

None from the teacher; you can ask students ahead of time to bring a challenge they are facing with them (or do another activity immediately before it like Spiral Journal where you ask them to reflect on their challenges).

INSTRUCTIONS

In-person instructions:

Form groups of three students each.
In three rounds, one student from a trio acts as a ‘client’ and two as ‘consultants’.
Students think about a problem they need help with for 1 minute.
The first person shares their problem with the group for 1-2 minutes.
The group asks the person questions to better understand the problem for 1-2 minutes.
The person turns around with their back to the group.
The group brainstorms ideas, suggestions, and advice for 4-5 minutes.
The person turns around and shares what was most helpful for 1-2 minutes.
The group moves on to the next person and repeats the steps.

For online, the action of ‘person turning their back’ can be done by the student turning off their video and muting.

DURATION

Explaining the activity would take around 2-3 minutes (or you can send students our video above ahead of time by way of explanation).
Each consultation round should take around 9-10 minutes.
Doing three rounds would therefore take 27-30 minutes.
Debrief can be done synchronously when students return to the main room, or by asking students to take notes in a shared Google doc, or individually in reflections they send the teacher or share with the rest of the class. It is important that in sharing out, people who came with a challenge are the ones who have the agency to share about what they learned (rather than the consultants).

ADAPTATIONS AND EXAMPLES

You might do some activities (before class, or during class but before the Troika time) to help students refine the challenge they will share with others.
If you have several students with connectivity issues, you can either:
- Have students meet in trios outside class time and do the activity on their own, and reflect later or report back.
- Put students in groups of four instead of three, just in case one person drops off.
- Keep students who have connectivity issues in the main room.

TECHNICAL REQUIREMENTS

Breakout rooms.

USEFUL RESOURCES

Troika Consulting – original activity from Liberating Structures website.
What are Liberating Structures?
A similar Liberating Structure is Wise Crowds and it has different formats for different sized groups.