Meeting with students one on one is a crucial element to active teaching and learning, and will do much to create a sense of immediacy and trust between the teacher and student. When conducting conferences, remember that the student should do the majority of the talking. As well, it is difficult to address more than one or two major areas of concern in a conference, so don’t feel like you have to cover all areas in the space of fifteen or twenty minutes. When the conference is text-centered around a student paper or draft, I have found two exercises to be helpful: outlining the draft and articulating claims and reasons (for argument-based papers). Feel free to download and use the PDFs for these exercises.
Collaborative Learning/Learning With Peers is an informative web page by Dartmouth that articulates the benefits of collaborative learning, how to conduct effective collaborations, how to respond collaboratively to works and texts. The web page also offers strategies for group presentations, collaborative research assignments, discussion groups, and peer evaluations.
Conducting Writing Workshops by Dartmouth also provides useful information about facilitating effective writing workshops in the classroom, considering pitfalls of the workshop model and also how to avoid them.
Robert's Teaching Portfolio 