In Collaborative Learning, Bruffee gives the following eleven basic principles for designing collaborative learning tasks:

1) Head every worksheet with the same general instructions

2) Ask one member in each group to read the whole task aloud.

3) make the material to be analyzed short.

4) limit the number of questions that the task asks studetns to address.

5) Make the questions short and simple.

6) Make the questions concrete and clearly expressed.

7) Sequence the questions within each task, and sequence tasks from clas to class and week to week. ( In other words go from simple practical problems, such as asking students to explain a concept, to more analytical questions such as those requiring synthesis).

8) Ask questions that have more than one answer.

9) Ask controversial questions.

10) Ask studetns to analyze short passages concretely.

11) Whenever the task asks studetns to generalize, ask them to support their generalizations with particulars.

Teachers, make sure design task well so that students will not turn to the teacher to clarify terms, or instruct them how to proceed. These kinds of requests should be turned back to the students to sort out (Bruffee 41-3).