Collaborative Learning

DEFINITION

In collaborative learning, students learn cooperatively rather than competitively. Actively engaging in cooperative learning activities, they work together, often seeking solutions to significant problems. Working in heterogeneous groups, each group member is often responsible for a specific task.

Researchers find many benefits for this process, including: Better mastery of skills Better academic performance Greater student retention Allows assignment of more challenging tasks without making the workload unreasonable Provides weaker students with extensive one-on-one tutoring  Provides stronger students with the deeper understanding that comes only from teaching material (cognitive rehearsal) Leads to the generation of more and better questions Jigsaw is an ideal structure for laboratory and design projects Increases students’ persistence in the completion of assignments and the likelihood of successful completion of assignments Helps students wean themselves away from considering teachers the sole sources of knowledge and understanding Promotes learning goals rather than performance goals Promotes a pattern of mastery attribution rather than a helpless attribution pattern.

PREPARING STUDENTS TO WORK COLLABORATIVELY

Establishing a Cooperative Climate

Although an increasing number of students are familiar with group work, it is a new and unfamiliar process for many others. Therefore it is important to introduce the process of collaborative learning carefully, to create a climate that encourages active student participation and effective cooperation among peers. This is best done at the beginning of the semester, preferably on the first day of class.

Student Interviews and Introductions

At the first class meeting, students are a little shy and apprehensive about starting a new class. A good way to put them more at ease while introducing the idea of collaborative learning is to tell them that their first assignment is to get to know one of their neighbors, a student sitting next to them. Their tasks are to interview each other and then introduce their interview partner to the class. Tell them how much time they will have to complete their task; ten minutes should be adequate. Late students can work in a group of three or else prepare to introduce themselves.

Ask the class to help you generate a list of things you might want to know about each other.

• Put the name first, and let the students add things like major, where they live, career goals, etc.
• Students may pass on any question they don’t want to answer except their name.
• If the students don’t mention these, you may include something about favorite food, hobbies, favorite book or film, something that could create some common ground and shared interests.
• Students learn from this first activity that they are going to be learning together with their fellow students, rather than in isolation, or competing against them.

Classroom Management Technique: Bringing the Group Together

Once people start participating and talking to each other, the noise level can get pretty high. While there are several ways of getting the groups’ attention, the most effective method will be the one the group chooses consensually. If the group has chosen the method, they are much more likely to follow it. The following three options can work well.

Visual Cue: Lights

Briefly turn the lights off to signal closing time for the discussions. This is often a popular method, but remember to ask if anyone has a problem with it since agreement is important here. Some people really object to this, and overriding a student’s concerns in the beginning makes it much harder to effectively teach them later.

Sound Cue: Clapping Hands

This can work if they are listening. If the class agrees to use this signal, try it a few times. If it doesn’t work, have them choose an alternative technique.

Visual Cue: Raise One Hand

The idea is as the hand goes up the mouth closes. The teacher starts, and as students see, they do the same thing until gradually the whole class is quiet. If you can get agreement, this actually works the best, but again only if the students agree.

Preparing the Groups

It helps to also circulate to each group and give them warning signals. Usually a one or two minute warning to "come to a stopping place" works well. Since not every student will entirely finish a task to their satisfaction, the words "stopping place" make it acceptable for them to determine what constitutes closure for their activity.

Large Group Introductions

After the students have concluded their interviews, they put their chairs in a circle so that everyone can see each other while they do their introductions. If time becomes short, students may give their partner’s name and one " fascinating fact’ about them. This can be a good time to take attendance and to learn how to pronounce students’ names as well.

Large Group Processing

Ask the students what the class activities have told them so far about the values and principles of the class, or more simply,

• "What do you think your teacher's ideas are about teaching and learning based on your experiences so far?"

• "What does it mean to sit sometimes in a circle rather with the desks all facing the front of the room?"

This can be a good starting place to talk about active learning, students taking responsibility for their learning from peers, and other such ideas that are important to your teaching philosophy and style. It can also be a time for students who are skeptical about this process to begin to question their own ideas about teaching and learning as they hear what their peers think of the experience.

CREATING CONSENSUAL GROUND RULES FOR EFFECTIVE GROUP WORK

Before any small group activities begin, it is important to create a safe and positive classroom environment so that the students can engage in thoughtful and analytical discussions.

In these discussions they will hear divergent and challenging points of view, and they will need to develop a deeper understanding of various perspectives. This will not happen by itself, so the semester should begin with the students actively collaborating to establish a safe and stimulating climate for discussions.

The first step is to set ground rules consensually. These rules are generally fairly simple, and most groups come up with the same things about respect, honesty, allowing people to finish their thoughts, criticizing the idea and not the person, and respecting confidentiality. It is tempting to just pass out a list of these rules and go over them, but there is a much stronger commitment to ground rules if the group generates them.

The students begin thinking about ground rules by drawing from their own experience, or writing about a friend with whom they are comfortable talking. A good way to start is to ask students:

"What does that person do to make you feel comfortable and to stimulate your thinking?"

Then remind them that:

"Our goal is to recreate these kinds of conversations here in the classroom."

Students then write for about five to ten minutes on this topic, and in small groups they come up with three "agreements." This stresses the cooperative nature of these ground rules. Each group then reads their agreements to the larger group, and together they create a class "constitution". The process of forming these agreements is important. Even though it takes time in the beginning, when the process is done:

• The level of active participation increases

• The involvement students have with the discussion topics increases

• The attention/respect they give each other and the teacher are all much stronger.

SELECTION AND COMPOSITION OF GROUPS

Group Size

Four to six is a good size for a group. If a group gets any larger than that, a few vocal people will take over, and the quieter people will not be as involved as they could be. According to Drs. David W. and Roger R. Johnson, co-directors of the University of Minnesota’s Cooperative Learning Center, smaller groups are the most successful ones. In fact, they recommend starting with dyads for many collaborative learning activities and increasing group size only as projects increase in difficulty.

Individual Preparation

While it may seem paradoxical to begin a discussion of group composition with the individual, an effective group is composed of well-prepared individuals, much like a good symphony orchestra or a basketball team. Therefore, a good way to build effective groups is to start with individual preparation.

One of the reasons that students do not participate in small or large group discussions is that they are afraid their ideas will be ridiculed. Unlike highly verbal students who will speak up frequently and spontaneously, other students may feel unprepared to contribute any ideas on a topic until they have thought about it for a while. Having them write about a topic before they come to the group ensures that they will engage in the learning process and not just sit on the sidelines. It also gives them notes to refer to and, if necessary, to read from when they begin their group activities.

There are several ways to prepare students:

DISCUSSION OUTLINE

Using a form adapted from Learning though Discussion, students do a critical summary or evaluation for the assigned reading. This form can be adapted for several levels. The third level contains all stages of Bloom’s taxonomy so the students are practicing their critical thinking skills as they prepare. The students prepare a discussion outline before class and refer to it during their group work.

PROMPTS

Students begin the activity by free writing or clustering in response to a teacher-directed prompt. This ensures that every student is involved in the process. The teacher circulates to verify that students are doing the task and to answer any questions.

• Students know whether or not they must share their writing. That way they can use private writing to explore an idea more deeply.
• They also begin to see that writing can be a useful personal act, not just a chore to please a teacher.
• Students may mark sections they want the teacher to look at or comment on.

Small Group Composition

Most research suggests that heterogeneously mixed groups work the best, ones that contain students with mixed levels of ability, different genders or ethnicity, etc. It seems that the ideal is a group that has enough difference to stimulate it and enough goodwill and desire to work cooperatively. Since the work on ground rules and classroom climate has addressed cooperation, let us look at how to structure diverse groups.

DYADS: Using dyads, groups of two, can be good way to start a small group activity. This technique can work in two ways:

• To start a small group process or
• To encourage participation during a lecture by giving students a chance to process the information and to stay focused on the material.

Have students begin by "talking to their neighbor" about a specific topic. Form a group of three if there are an odd number of students. This will:

• Encourage even quiet people to participate
• Reduce isolation and alienation in classroom
• Develop a positive classroom climate.

EXPANDED DYADS: Dyads can build into groups of four and/or six. Again this gives a student who is not used to participating in class another safe step to further involvement. Over the course of a semester, with careful guidance and encouragement from the teacher, and increasingly from the other students, a quiet student can move from writing individually to:

• Speaking in dyads
• Speaking in a small group
• Speaking to a large group.

Since public speaking is many peoples’ greatest fear, this progress is not insignificant.