Learning Through Collaboration

How collaboration can create more learning value

A Student of the University of British Columbi...

Parents and teachers often frown upon the idea of collaborative learning. They feel students will waste their time talking more and studying less. Yet, research has indicated that discussing a topic that is being learnt leads to better retention.

Students who study in solitude may have their own techniques of retention. But no one can remember vast amounts of information learnt in solitude. Unless of course, the learnt matter is put into practice.

Students when learning may not really always write down what they learnt. They might not develop alternate skills that could enhance their understanding of the subject. Some students might do mock-presentations of what they learnt to an invisible audience. Some of them might do mock-teachings. But these things are not necessarily done without motivation. Here is where collaborative learning comes in.

When studying in groups, students automatically put into practice what they learnt by speaking about the topics of study to fellow study-members. A discussion about a topic creates a lot of opinions amongst many people. They start to explain their version of the concept. At the end of it all, a student can actually go and write an exam without even reading a word.

Collaborative learning is much more than studying in groups. It often works with the backdrop of a sound technological infrastructure. It could include online learning forums, discussion groups, communities of practice, knowledge management tools, and much more.

Collaborative learning is not restricted to educational institutions. It can be applied to corporates too.

Filed Under: Collaboration Help, Team Building Tagged With: Education, Knowledge management, Learning Through Collaboration

Important Collaborative Learning Strategies

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Collaborative learning is becoming a more popular teaching method in the classroom and workplace. This type of learning involves two or more individuals working together to learn a new topic of reach a common goal. This allows the group members to capitalize on each other’s knowledge or skill of a certain topic.

One of the most important aspects of effective collaborative learning is to immediately build strong group interdependence. This is a camaraderie that encourages group members to work together to reach a common objective. Collaborative learning could include awarding bonus points to a group if all members score above a specific score.

An often overlooked strategy is to keep the groups small. Since group members will be required to interact on a regular basis, it is important to keep groups to a maximum of six students. More than six could result in finding time to fit all members’ schedules to collaborate.

Another effective concept is to implement peer instruction. This is typically comprised of developing assignments by which students learn a specific expertise on different topics. Then, the student is required to teach their peers in a structured format such as developing an activity, an interactive online lecture, a game or a quiz.

Similarly, by giving students more control over the collaborative work process, they will be able to better manage within groups. Students should be given a choice in learning activities, initiation of activity, decision-making and the end products. Groups who select their own topics and develop their own projects will have much more pride and thus motivation to successfully complete the assignment. The student will take ownership of the project.

Filed Under: Collaboration Help, Learning Through Collaboration Tagged With: Collaborative learning, Education, Learning Through Collaboration

Some Qualities That All Teachers Must Inculcate & Possess

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There are some qualities that all teachers must possess. This will help them impress students when lecturing on their area of expertise

It is important to be patient. One must never forget that students are there to learn and that they are not experts in the subject. Hence, the silly question is inevitable. Of course, some students may take advantage of this perception to purposefully irritate the faculty. Well, this is a part and parcel of the learning process and cannot be avoided.

A person who is irritated or frustrated by the habits and attitudes of youngsters cannot become a good teacher. If you are short on patience, you must try to inculcate the same so that you contribute maximum to your students’ development.

Taking things personally is not a smart move. Students tend to be irreverent. They have no regard for your experience or expertise. They don’t know anything and therefore they do not understand the value of knowledge. In such a scenario, trying to shout your way and trying to demand respect from your students is only going to lead to complications.

Even if you do win your respect, it is going to be a false victory. Any mistake on the part of the students is merely a sign of their immaturity. You should shrug it off and focus on those students who are interested in learning.

It is important to understand what students need. A teacher who talks too fast in the class may not satisfy the curiosity of his or her students despite being an expert in the subject. These issues must be analyzed before proceeding.

Filed Under: Collaboration Help Tagged With: Education, Learning Through Collaboration, Student, Teacher

Online or Traditional Photography Degree? You may be Surprised

You’re considering going back to school and have tossed around the idea of taking an online course or two. But you’re hesitant. You wonder if you’ll be able to keep upwithout a teacher hovering over you and how much the cost will be.

In the end, you want to make the best decision possible. You have questions that need answers.

The good news?According to one recent study conducted by SRI International for the Department of Education, “On average, students in online learning conditions performed better than those receiving face to face instruction.”

What this means for you is that by going the online route, you may find that your learning will actually be enhanced.

Enhanced? Impossible!

Not really. When you consider the speed as well as the direct way in which we learn as individuals, online learning allows for these differences. Instead of sitting across from an instructor who speaks too fast or has an accent we don’t understand, or an instructor who is about as exciting to listen to as a carpenter ant, we can access the information at our convenience, read at our own speed, listen to a video and stop it when we need to take a break or write a piece of information down. We’re not locked into a schedule and our gas tank is still at fullby the end of the week.
Though an online degree program will cost you about mid-range of a traditional school, the costs go down considerably when you consider how often your car stays in the garage, the difference food from your own refrigerator makes, and the opportunities galore to plain and simply do what you want when you want.

In the long run, what you want is the best possible education, onethat will give you the results you need.What better way to boost your learning performance than to study online?

Filed Under: Virtual Collaboration Tagged With: Education, eLearning, Learning Through Collaboration, Online degrees

Collaborative Learning as a Teaching Philosophy

There are many successful ways of teaching groups and individuals, and collaborative learning as a teaching philosophy attempts to address both. Collaborative learning is about choosing to work with a group to improve one’s knowledge of a particular subject or situation. Often instruction places students at various performance levels together to achieve a single goal. The idea is that they will succeed or fail together.

In a deeper approach, the success of collaborative learning as a teaching philosophy can be seen as a way to help poor performing students improve as they work side by side with high performing students. This form of instruction works well in the classroom, around small group projects. Once it moves into larger settings, it might be defined as cooperative learning.

The distinction between the two teaching philosophies is that collaborative learning is focused on the students’ achievements where cooperative learning is usually an educator designed environment that focuses on the interaction between teachers and students. The terms are sometimes interchangeable as teachers are certainly involved in the collaborative learning model, too.

Collaborative learning has four distinct characteristics. They are:
The shared knowledge among teachers and students
The shared authority in designing lesson plans, goals and assessing what it is learned
Teachers as mediators instead of the authority
Diverse groupings of students to mix various backgrounds, cultures and experiences to enhance the learning model.

A critical feature of the collaborative learning philosophy is that it lacks segregation. Children are not separated by ability, interests or achievements. They are grouped together so that they can learn from each others’ experiences and knowledge. This fosters a deeper understanding of different cultures, lifestyles, and insights. Often brighter students actually learn something from the average or poor student, so the learning environment is enriched on a number of levels. Life skills, people skills and public interaction become lessons that are learned and improved upon in a collaborative setting.

Filed Under: Collaboration Help, Learning Through Collaboration Tagged With: Collaboration, Collaborative learning, Cooperative learning, Education, Knowledge, Learning Through Collaboration, Student, Teacher

How to Make Team Learning Successful

Team learning can be very successful if it’s structured right. However, a poor lesson plan or lack of accountability for the individuals in the group can spell disaster. In order to get the full benefits of the team learning environment a few criteria need to be met.

The groups have to be properly formed and managed. Typically, the group should be no bigger than five to seven students. There also needs to be an even distribution of member characteristics. In other words, four high achieving students placed with one poor student will not foster a good learning environment or produce satisfactory results. Likely the poor performer will continue to under perform as the odd man out.

The students must be made individually accountable for preparing their individual components for the group project, devoting time and effort towards the group project, and by interacting in a positive way. Therefore, the individual components have to be the same for each student.

The team assignment has to promote good team learning and good team development. Some of the biggest complaints from team members are the presence of free riders and conflict within the group. The best way to avoid team conflict is to make assignments that promote team decision making in simple forms. Don’t make it too complex where poorer students will fall behind.

The overlying philosophy in team learning is about the collaboration. Academics are certainly key, but so are the life lessons that are learned when students are expected to work together and achieve together. Ultimately, the unique characteristics of each team member should bring assets to the project that will make it successful.

Teachers should stress commitment by the entire team and allow the students to exercise free will in completing the project. In this way, the students engage in a collaborative learning model that allows them to teach and learn from each other.

Filed Under: Team Building Tagged With: Collaborative learning, Education, Learning Theories, Learning Through Collaboration, Lesson plan, Methods and Theories, Project, Student

Best Ways to Learn

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Everyone learns differently. Or so we’re told. In fact, there are a few things that consistently seem to be the best ways to learn. We’ve all heard that some people learn best visually, some by doing, some by hearing, some by experiencing, and so forth. These are true, but the best scenarios may be a little broader than just one sense coming into play.

The most important factor in learning is that the student has to want to learn. When people want to learn something, they do. It may be sooner or it may be later, but they’ll eventually learn it if they really want to.

Learning by doing is definitely one of the best ways to learn. It’s about trial and error, practice, and making mistakes. Without even realizing it, small children learn like this every day.

All people learn through feedback. Humans love positive reinforcement, so if the feedback is good, people will make greater efforts to learn, and they’ll remember what they got right. Humans are a feeling species, so we have feelings about everything we do.

Finally, people need to be able to make sense of what they are learning. If it doesn’t have a clear process that can be digested, it won’t be learned. Our minds naturally sort out what is useful and build on that while discarding what isn’t necessary. Therefore, we literally are digesting the information coming in. The task has to be understandable in order for it to be learned.

If teachers can employ these best ways to learn, even abstract concepts become easier for students to grasp. They just need to keep in mind that the student has to want to learn, has to experience or do the learning, get feedback as they go and finally make sense of it all. Keep in mind that these best practices will work best for a teacher who is motivational.

Filed Under: Learning Through Collaboration Tagged With: Education, Feedback, Learning Theories, Learning Through Collaboration, Methods and Theories, Reinforcement, Student, Teacher

The Best Education System in the World Uses Collaboration

Finland is considered the best education system in the world for many reasons, but one thing they understand very well is collaboration. Shorter school days, less years in school and strict expectation of parents are definitely key, but collaboration in the classroom guarantees all students can succeed.

The best education system doesn’t require children to start school until the age of seven. The Finnish believe that play is learning, so they want the children to learn and experience through play before their studies begin. Once the children begin school, the collaboration begins with the way the school system is structured. First, children don’t change schools between primary and secondary education. They keep the same teachers for a longer period time, so the teacher can watch each child grow and develop in a more consistent manner. Slower learners are not separated from the main class. They are kept in the standard teaching room, and everyone participates in making sure they are successful.

Teachers are highly regarded in Finland, and often think of themselves as a school mother who helps guide the kids through difficult times that can inhibit learning. It is an interesting concept that the best education system in the world is so different from the system in the U.S. To the Finnish, school should not be rigid. It should be fun, team or family oriented, and less time intensive.

This unique model means that the country has the highest literacy rate among teenagers and the highest percentage of regular readers. Finnish students excel in math and science, too. They are only second to South Korea in math, but South Korean kids keep very long school hours.

The Finnish believe that a heavy economic investment in being the best in the world is the future of their country due to their small, affluent high-tech position in the the world.

Filed Under: Learning Through Collaboration Tagged With: Education, Finland, K through 12, Learning Through Collaboration, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, South Korea, State school, United States

How Some Businesses Use Collaborative Learning

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Businesses are often dedicated to helping their employees grow while they are with that particular company. One of the ways that an employee can grow is by learning new skills and trades while on the job. Many companies, in an effort to help these employees learn and grow, have started to turn to collaborative learning techniques to help distribute new information and help their employees accumulate additional skills.

Collaborative learning is the ability of two or more people to get together and learn from one another. This can either be done by having a group of people get together and debate and talk about what should be done on a project or just simply by having groups of people get together to learn new skills that are essential to their particular career path.

Here are some ways that companies have used collaborative learning to help further their employee’s carers.

Enrichment Courses. An apartment community in the Seattle area signed up all their employees for an enrichment course. This course got all managers together to learn about various selling techniques that are being used recently and how to market their apartments for rent in Seattle so that people are interested. The group sat together and learned from one other in this collaborative learning environment.

Motivational Courses. A carpet cleaning company has had a motivational speaker go around and speak to all their employees. While this motivational speaker is supposed to motivate the sales team to sell items, he also brought the group of employees together so that they could brainstorm — collaboratively — about various ways to sell their products and maximize their revenue and earning potential.

While these are just two examples of how companies are embracing the idea of collaborative learning, it is a sure bet that more companies will start to incorporate this style of learning into their company’s plan.

Filed Under: Workplace Collaboration Tagged With: Collaborative learning, Learning Through Collaboration, Seattle

The Peer-Led Team Learning Approach

The peer-led team learning approach offers a unique collaborative learning technique that allows groups of six to eight students to work on course study together. A student peer leader will guide the group. The individual who is chosen to lead is a student who has previously succeeded in the course.

As a peer leader, the student receives valuable experiences that can have a huge impact on professional growth. The leader is not there to give answers, but to provide guidance, support, motivation and constructive criticism. This style of teaching helps provide timely assistance when the group encounters a problem, brings new techniques and ideas to problem solving and keeps encouragement in the forefront.

There are six critical components that make peer-led team learning successful. First, the workshop has to be a regular led course that students are expected to attend. The teacher has to be closely involved in the workshop and its leaders. Naturally, the peer leaders have to be well trained and closely supervised. The workshop materials have to be challenging and conducive to collaborative learning. The space, time and other organizational factors have to be optimal for group learning, and finally, the school has to support the peer-led learning approach and it’s innovative way of guiding students.

For those interested in exploring peer-led team learning, there is a website that helps explain and guide, as well as offer current news and publications. It can be found at http://www.pltl.org. The FAQ section of this website is very comprehensive and can answer the questions that even the most critical educator may have about this style of teaching and learning.

What is most important to understand is that the peer leader is not the teacher. He or she is a guide and a support. The experience is about the group, not the individual.

Filed Under: Learning Through Collaboration, Team Building Tagged With: Collaborative learning, Education, FAQ, Learning Through Collaboration, Methods and Theories, Peer group, Student, Teacher