Collaboration in the classroom is, in my eyes, a very
important part of education. Students collaborating to complete work paves the
way for good cooperation and team-work skills later in life, and opens up
students to a diverse range of opinions on the topic they are studying,
allowing for a better understanding and (for me at least) better engagement. Sing (et al) recognises a recent shift toward
a much more group-based working society, and goes on to say that collaborative learning in the classroom is necessary to develop the skills and knowledge
needed to navigate through 21st century society effectively. Sing et
al describes collaborative learning as learning that occurs with social
interaction as a way to better understand the curriculum being taught or to
create assessment items of a higher standard than usual. Collaborative learning
strikes a chord with me; senior maths and chemistry involved a lot of
collaborative learning due to the teaching styles employed, and it worked quite
well for me.
Sing et al provides a good example of a situation where
collaborative learning is an effective way to solve problem. Once presented
with the problem, students discuss the task, developing an ‘ownership’ of the
task and further developing their own ideas and opinions toward the problem
along the way. Once this sense of ownership has been formed, students share
their ideas, further refining their own knowledge on the topic at hand as they
gather each other’s differing viewpoints and understanding of the task. The
sharing of ideas can then leads to students exploring further into the task via
experimentation, research or other means, ultimately resulting in a level of
understanding much deeper than if they had attempted the problem themselves.
This is a fantastic description of collaborative learning, but I think it is
better said later on in the article, when Sing et al draw on Vygotsky’s theory
of social interaction in learning. In essence, the key concept in collaborative
learning is that students develop a better understanding of a topic than if
they to work on their own, due to having to process the knowledge, thoughts and
opinions of others on said topic. Collaborative learning is by all means a
fantastic way of educating classes, but it is noted in Sing’s work that it does
have its shortcomings. If the class is full of very introverted students,
minimal discussion may occur, destroying the very basis on which collaborative
learning is built. A simple way around this issue (and a simple way of
extending collaborative learning to the home) is with the use of ‘wiki’s’.
Wiki’s are essentially a very simple way of collaborating online – individuals
(be it the general public or a select group) can work together to produce
articles, add in their own parts and edit mistakes others have made, all while
remaining anonymous (which for shy students, may be all that is needed for them
to collaborate, as it removes the fear of being ridiculed or ignored by the
group). In a classroom setting, teacher and student alike are able to track the
development of a group task as it goes on. Rather than the teacher and students
marking a draft of the full article before assessment, all members of the
classroom (including the teacher) can make suggested changes to the article as
it is constructed (Duffy et al, 2006). Duffy also specifically mentions the
collaboration possible when using wiki’s, noting, as Sing et al did, the need
for sound communication skills in modern society and in the workforce. The use
wiki’s in education allows for easy item assessment, as the teacher can view
who made what contributions, identifying whether students are contributing
enough (or perhaps too much). Wiki’s provide a digital approach to
collaborative work in an increasingly digital world, and allows for the
anytime, anywhere creation of a group item which is of high quality.
How Collaborative Learning might utilise technology available in smartphones.
References:
The Use of Blogs, Wikis
and RSS in Education: A Conversation of Possibilities. In Proceedings Online
Learning and Teaching Conference - Duffy, Peter and Bruns, Axel, 2006, pages 31-38, Brisbane
Advancing Collaborative Learning with
ICT – Chai CHing Sing, Lim Wei-Ying, So Hyo-Jeong, Cheah Horn Mun, 2011
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